Layout:
Besides some minor details, this is a typical high integrated µATX board. While some manufacturers integrate Firewire on such boards, J&W decided to go with a diagnostic LED-display on the back-panel. The downside is that there are only 4 USB 2.0 slots on the back, and they could have done more.



The VRM is an analog 4-phase design driven by an ISL6323, which supports split planes for Phenom CPUs. Of course, we would have wished for an all-solid capacitors design, but in this market segment the price dictates the features. J&W did more than others.



The memory slots are located right of the CPU socket instead of below. This saves some space, but will give you trouble with some CPU coolers. The BIOS features a fan-controller for the CPU  cooler, so you may go with the boxed cooler. The manual does not say how to install dual-channel, but go with the same-colour slots and you'll be fine.

We found nothing special to write about the slots, J&W did not incorporate a PCIe x1 slot, which is quite a pity, but two PCI-slots will also suffice for TV- or soundcards.






Network connectivity is provided by one Marvel Gb 88E8056 PCIe chip. J&W provides a Realtek ALC888 audio chip. The clock generator also comes from Realtek with an RTM880N.



The SATA and PATA connectors are, as usual, on the bottom edge of the board. Six SATA and one PATA in standard configuration give you plenty of possiblities for lots of storage. The front-panel header is kept black, but J&W assured us they want to replace them with a color-coded model to ease the installation for the user.




The most important part on this board is the RS780 chip, which is quite frankly an RV620 in 55nm with a hypertransport interface. It's clocked with 500MHz, but inside the BIOS you can overclock up to 1023MHz. The cooling solution will hinder you from doing so, because the aluminium-cooler suffices only up to 750MHz. We tried 850MHz, but the temperature on the heatsink reached 95.4°C - this can't be healthy for the board.

With only 2.1cm by 2.1cm this chip is one of the smallest integrated chipset ever used. J&W also incorporates 64MB sideband memory, which is actually graphics-memory. It is clocked with 267MHz (respectively 533MHz), which can be overclocked to 333MHz. We hope J&W will release a version of this board with increased onboard memory and faster clocks.