Foxconn Z68A-S review
2. A closer look
The Foxconn Z68A-S motherboard would be priced at the price range of $120~160 (including VAT), depending on your region.
The retail package has the typical Foxconn Design with some sticker at the bottom left indicating the product's features.
Once opened, other than the motherboard units, inside the packaging you'll find a a quick install guide, CD containing drivers and software, I / O panel bracket, and two SATA cables:
Foxconn Z68A-S comes with black PCB color with bright yellow accents on the PCI-Express x16 slots, DIMM slots, as well as several headers. This motherboard use a standard ATX form factor Overall, there is one PCI-Express x16 slots, two PCI-Express x1 slots and three PCI slots.
The area around the CPU socket looks relieved:
The positions of the basic elements / connectors on the PCB can be easily identified in the picture below:
Although the motherboard is supposed to be designed for enthusiasts and overclockers, it has a simple 5-phase power VRM design, without any passive heat sinks found around the cpu area as we typically see in other motherboards:
You can install up to 32Gb of DDR3 2133MHz memory in the provided memory slots. However, XMP profiles are not supported:
The backplate panel of I/Os includes:
- 1 x PS/2 keyboard port
- 1 x VGA port
- 1 x DVI port
- 1 x S/PDIF out Optical port
- 1 x eSATAII port
The motherboard supports:
- 1 x PCI Express 2.0 x16 slots. (1x16)---Yellow
- 2 x PCI Express x1 slot.--Black
- ·3 x PCI slot-Black
We were disappointed to see the lack of a second PCIe 2.0 slot for SLI/Crossfire setups. On the other hand, it includes 3 PCI slots:
On the left part of the mainboard there are 2x SATA 6.0 Gb/s ports (yellow) and 3x SATA 3Gb/s ports (black), handled by Intel's Z68 chipset.
Many additional internal I/O ports are also available:
- 1 x ATX 24-Pin power connector
- 1 x 8-pin ATX 12V power connector
- 1 x 4-pin CPU FAN connectors
- 2 x 4-pin System FAN connector
- 1 x Front panel header
- 1 x Front Audio Header
- 1 x COM header
- 1 x TPM header
- 4 x USB 2.0 connectors support additional 8 ports
- 3 x Serial ATAII connectors
- 2 x Serial ATAIII connectors
- 1 x Intruder Alarm headers
- 1 x S/PDIF out header
- 1 x CLR_CMOS header
- 1 x CD-IN header
- 1 x Speaker header
