The Foxconn 975X7AA is a well designed motherboard on a red PCB. The connections, PCI and memory slots are all colour coded in order to make it much easier to identify where you should connect cables or install components.

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Below you can see the 775 socket with the plastic cover, which protects the socket from damage. Don't forget, with 775 processors, the pins are on the socket and not on the processor, so a little caution with the motherboard is necessary.

The Northbridge and Southbridge have their own cooling systems. The i975X Northbridge has a fan while the ICH7R Southbridge uses a silent, passive cooler.

The Dual Channel DDR2 slots supports 533/667MHz and 800MHz, with maximum capacity up to 8GB. In order to run a pair of DDR2 modules in dual channel, you have to use two slots of the same colour, that is, either the yellow or the blue.

There are only two extra fan connections on board, apart from the one for the CPU and Northbridge. A couple more connections would be welcome, not in the sense that you need to install that many extra fans, but depending on where you install your fan, the cable doesn't always reach so having a connection at each of the four sides of the motherboard helps.

A firewire connection is available on the back panel of the board, however there is an extra socket on the motherboard for more connections.

The CPU power slot can take an 8-pin EPS12V cable or a 4-pin ATX12V cable.

The 24pin power connector is located parallel to the floppy connection.

For extra power, especially in Crossfire mode, you'll have to connect a 4pin power cable to the board.

There is only one IDE connection, the onboard Primary...

...but six SATA connections, as well as one on the back panel.

If you need more than the four USB2.0 connections available on the back panel, there are four more.

Dual graphics card slots with Crossfire support.

On the back panel there are the following ports:

1 x PS/2 keyboard
1 x PS/2 mouse
1 x RJ45 (LAN)
4 x USB 2.0
1 x line-in/line-out/mic (audio)
1 x parallel (SPP/ECP/EPP)
Additional line-outs for 7.1 channel audio
Second RJ45 (LAN)
1 x IEEE-1394
2 x S/PDIF (1 x coax out + 1 x optical out)