ECS L7VTA (KT400): 1st with 333MHz FSB Support

Board Layout

The ECS L7VTA's layout was pretty clean and well thought out in general. We only had a few minor layout gripes with the L7VTA.

Our biggest complaint is the placement of the main ATX connector. As seems to happen more often than not, motherboard makers are placing the ATX connector on the other end of the CPU next to the I/O ports. This restricts air flow somewhat, but more annoyingly clutters case space, sometimes making it challenging to install and uninstall hardware inside the case (like a CPU heatsink, a CD-ROM, or memory for example).

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The rest of the motherboard was quite nicely laid out however. The DIMM connectors are spaced well away from the video card, which makes it easy to install/uninstall memory without having to uninstall the video card. Of course, the placement of the ATX connector makes it difficult to install/uninstall memory anyway, so the space between the DIMM connectors and AGP slot may be of little significance. However, we're glad to see the ample room available anyway.

The RAID and Primary/Secondary connectors are also placed well, so that you can maneuver the IDE connectors away from the middle of the case. This gives the end user more room to move around the case.