ABIT IC7 MAX3 (875P): New Overclocking Champion?

Company: ABIT
Product: IC7 MAX3
Street Price: $225 USD
Date Reviewed: September 25, 2003
Reviewed By: Joey Chao

ABIT IC7 MAX3  Motherboard Layout:

The board layout is fairly good with only a few complaints. The 20-pin ATX power connector is located on the middle, right side of the board. We like the placement on the edge of the board but putting it in the middle makes the cables come across the socket and the DIMM slot. Just a little bit higher would have been good. The 4-pin connector is placed at the top of the board and since there are only 4 wires, it should be out of the way of any other components. The floppy connector is right above the 20-pin ATX connector, which is fine and the IDE connections are just below that. We have seen the "odd" positioning of the IDE connectors on many of ABIT's recent boards. It is only really awkward if you have short cables and/or flat cables.

Here is a good picture showing that the AGP slot is not too close to the DIMM slots. On some boards this is an issue and makes it impossible to remove the memory without also having to remove the graphics card. Right above the AGP slot, you can see the Northbridge cooler. Notice this is the "revised" heatsink like the newer IC7's have. It is not very loud, though some people may be bothered. It just depends on how picky the user is. Some love active cooling on the NB and others can do without it. For an overclocking board, we really like to see active cooling solutions.

The MAX3's OTES (Outside Thermal Exhaust System) is designed to keep the mosfets and capacitors cool giving the board higher overclocking capabilities. There is a duct that covers the capacitors and mosfets. On the mosfets are heatsinks to help pull the heat away from the power regulators. A fan located above the rear I/O panel draws air through the plastic duct cooling all the power components. When the system is powered on there are three green LED's that light up the OTES. One problem that we did encounter with OTES is that it is very close to the sockets making it difficult to install and remove a heat sink. We had trouble even with our stock Intel heatsink.

Here is a much better picture of the heatsinks on the mosfets. You can see that they are just they cover the entire regulator and are also cooled by the fan above the rear I/O. We checked underneath the heatsinks to see if some sort of thermal compound was being used and there is not any. Perhaps adding some like Arctic Silver's Ceramique (non conductive) might help transfer the heat between the heatsink and the mosfets. Some of you are probably wondering how this design will work with your current case. Do not worry, ABIT already took this into consideration and designed a special I/O shield plate with a spot for the fan to be able to exhaust.

The Outside Thermal Exhaust System is a very interesting design. Not only does it cool the hottest components but it also expels the hot air out of the back of the case instead of just heating up the rest of the system. It looks great and would definitely spice up a case with a window.