Intel D875PBZ (Intel 875P Canterwood) Motherboard Review
Intel D875PBZ Board Layout
The PCB design is very convenient in the assembler's viewpoint: the power connectors are positioned well, there are no issues of blocking the memory slots with a video card. Besides, near to each important component (connector, jumper) there is a distinct marking.
The board offers 4 connectors to plug in fans: the CpuFan is reserved for a processor cooler and is positioned near the processor socket, the Vreg Fan is near the power supply module, and the Front Fan near the BIOS chip.
One more connector, (RearFan) is placed near the chipset. However, the chipset does not require active cooling at all: there is a huge radiator on top of it.
Under the North Bridge there are 4 DIMM slots, all partitioned into two groups, with two slots in each group. The first two slots refer to the first controller channel, with the other two to the second controller.
Unfortunately, there is no multicolored marking. In fact, this board is aimed at system integrators with enough skills :) . The maximum memory capacity makes up 4GB; and ECC memory modules are allowed.
Once voltage is applied to the motherboard, a greed LED positioned near the BIOS chip lights up.
There is an AGP Pro slot with a latch installed onboard. Only 1.5V (or 0.8V) AGP 4x/8x video cards are allowed into the slot.
Besides, there are five PCI slots on D875PBZ motherboard.
Expansion options
The board also supports only two SerialATA channels served by the south bridge ICH5R. It allows merging SerialATA disks into a RAID array of level 0.
Also, the ICH5 offers support for eight USB 2.0 ports, six of which are mounted on the rear panel, with 2 more ports connected through headers. The board also offers a high-speed Intel 82547 LAN controller that provides data transmission speed as fast as 1000 Mbit/s (or Gigabit Ethernet).
Note that it is connected via the dedicated CSA bus.
And that's all - there are no other features the D875PBZ supports. Actually, there is a contact pad for the AD1985 audio chip made by Analog Devices, but it is not installed.
Now take a look at the board's rear panel.
Intel D875PBZ offers only one jumper intended for clearing the BIOS settings. Its operation principle is somehow different from other, similar jumpers. In the nominal position (1-2), the system starts up normally; in the (2-3) position we immediately get into the BIOS regardless of any settings (including the memory latency timings). The user can also change any passwords. But if we leave the jumper completely open, then the "BIOS recovery from diskette" function will snap on (the closest analog is Asus CrashFree BIOS).
Now on to the BIOS settings in more detail.
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