Filter
Top Products
Introduction
Page 1-5
Mainboard Form-Factor
The board is designed with ATX form factor - the latest industry standard of
chassis. The ATX form factor is essentially a Baby-AT baseboard rotated 90
degrees within the chassis enclosure and a new mounting configuration for the
power supply. With these changes the processor is relocated away from the
expansion slots, allowing them all to hold full length add-in cards. ATX defines a
double height aperture to the rear of the chassis which can be used to host a
wide range of onboard I/O. Only the size and position of this aperture is defined,
allowing PC manufacturers to add new I/O features (e.g.; TV input, TV output,
joystick, modem, LAN, audio, etc.) to systems. This will help systems integrators
differentiate their products in the marketplace, and better meet your needs.
By integrating more I/O down onto the board and better positioning the hard
drive and floppy connectors material cost of cables and add-in cards is
reduced.
By reducing the number of cables and components in the system, manufac-
turing time and inventory holding costs are reduced and reliability will
increase.
By using an optimized power supply, it's possible to reduce cooling costs
and lower acoustical noise. An ATX power supply, which has a side-
mounted fan, allows direct cooling of the processor and add-in cards making
a secondary fan or active heatsink unnecessary in most system applications.
PCI slots
Expandable I/O
Figure 2: Summary of ATX chassis features
CPU
Single chassis
fan for system
ATX
Power
Supply
ATX power connector
Floppy/IDE
connectors
AGP slot
3 1/2-inch
Bay
5 1/4-inch
Bay
ATX 12V power
connector