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The 965 Express series chipsets gives Intel something that it has been lacking for a couple of years; a versatile chipset that offers excellent performance for a low price.
82% Rating: 
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Foxconn G9657MA-8KS2H |
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Foxconn Motherboard Highlights
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Looking at the
bottom right hand corner of the Foxconn G9657MA-8KS2H we find an IDE
connector, a pair of green USB2.0 headers, four blue Serial ATA II
channels and the front panel I/O connectors. RAID 0/1/5/10 comes care of
the Intel ICH8R southbridge chipset, which supports NCQ and 'hot plug'.
The eSATA jack at the rear of the board counts as the fifth SATA port on
this board. The JMicron IDE and SATA II port can also support RAID
1/0/JBOD between themselves. The Intel ICH8R Southbridge doesn't generate
much heat by the looks of that puny passive heatsink. The Foxone chipset
is seen here, in the lower right corner of the
board.
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The Foxconn
G9657MA-8KS2H has a PCI Express x16 slot for videocards, one PCI-e x1 for
high bandwidth devices, and two 32-bit PCI expansion slots. There is one
IDE Ultra/133 header available, so save this for optical drives. The green
port next to this is another USB2.0 header. An 8-pin EPS-12V power
connector is visible at the upper left corner of this image, a compatible
powersupply is required.
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The Foxconn
G9657MA-8KS2H has four 240-pin DDR-2 memory DIMM slots which support up to
8GB of DDR-2 800/667/533 RAM. Populate the DIMM slots of the same colour
first for dual channel memory. The board is backwards compatible with
legacy 20 pin ATX power supplies, but it's recommended to use at least a
400W PSU which has a 24-pin power connector and 8-pin EPS-12V connector as
well. The COM1 header, floppy and 24-pin ATX power connectors are placed
along the edge of the board which is always nice to
see.
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There is plenty of
space around the Socket 775 so you can install larger after market
heatsinks. The passively cooled Intel G965 Express Northbridge generates a
fair amount of heat, so maintain good airflow in the chassis, or add your
own chipset heatsink fan. A 3-pin fan header is located just to the right
for that very reason. The CPU processor fan is PWM compliant. Note the
8-pin EPS12V power connector just to the upper right of the LGA775 CPU
socket. The G965 Express supports processors running on a
1066/800/667/533MHz front side bus.
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There is enough
space on the Foxconn G9657MA-8KS2H motherboard to install a dual-slot PCI
Express x16 videocard, with room left for two PCI
cards.
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