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We are slowly prepping the board for our test session. We make use of the reference Intel cooler slash helicopter. Incredible cooling for the Northbridge chip huh? It needs it as running that high FSB will make the Northbridge chipset silicon really hot.

Right, OCZ DDR2 memory in place. Processor in Place. We're slowly getting there ! As you can see we have the standard intel reference cooler equipped on this system.

And all wiring finished. After building the rig I found that the multiple I/O connectors are where you'd expect them to be. The USB pin headers are closer to the center of the board (allows eight USB 2.0 ports in total), three FireWire ports (100/200/400 MB/sec), right next to the south bridge heatsink (short datapath). The floppy connector is located at the very bottom of the board, more or less centered. All in all good positioning.

Right, ready to do some testing?