Manufacturer AOpen 
Retail Price $280 

Expansion Slot : 5/2/1 
Extra's : SCSI

OK, people- it’s SCSI time! The AOpen AX6B Plus is the first of two SCSI motherboards featured in this roundup. This full size ATX board has a 4/3/1 PCI, ISA and AGP combination, including one shared PCI/ISA slot. The AX6B Plus also features a jumperless design and supports the same clock multipliers and the same FSB frequencies as the AX6BC does. For the record, here they are again: CPU clock multiplier ranges from 1.5x – 8.0x and front side bus speeds range from 66.8MHz – 133Mhz. One more important feature worthy of mention is the AGP ratio setting as Auto, 2/3, or 1/1. These are very important settings for overclockers if they encounter problems with their AGP graphics cards, because all you have to do is change the AGP ratios to bring the AGP bus closer to home (well, to 66MHz, which is the default frequency). 

What about the SCSI part itself? Well, to start with, the board houses the Adaptec AHA-7880P UltraWide SCSI controller. This chipset allows the AX6BC Plus to support UltraWide SCSI devices but not Ultra2Wide SCSI devices as the high-end controllers or SCSI boards would allows you to. But this also explains why the price of this board stays at a decent $250, cause it’s not easy to find Ultra2Wide SCSI motherboards below $280 or $300. What’s more, the board also houses an optional RAID Port connector that can be used to add a hardware RAID controller to your system. Quite an important feature if you’re planning on switching to the RAID arena along the way.

As for the packaging, the board comes with a Norton Anti-Virus CD, a typical AOpen-style (very detailed, in other words) user manual and the necessary drivers & utilities to operate the board.

Another feature is the board’s battery-less design. A CMOS battery is optional- without a battery, the CMOS data will remain as long as the board is connected to a power supply. In case you do occasionally remove power from the system, the included battery can be used. Most importantly, the AX6B Plus allows the user to monitor the CPU, CPU fan speed and voltage, as well as an option to alert the machine if a set ambient temperature limit is exceeded.
 

We tested the board with several UltraWide SCSI hard drives and CD-R drives, and it worked very well.  PCI IRQ and DMA addressing was perfect and of course the stability of the board was really good, just like the AX6BC. Unfortunately, again I’m going to bring up the same old issue of voltage manipulation, which the AX6BC and many other boards out there also lack. This may not be an important feature unless you’re into overclocking, but if you are seriously into overclocking, you’ll know what I mean. To sum up, the AOpen AX6BC is stable, has some important features and carries a decent price tag. Don’t forget that SCSI capabilities are limited to UltraWide, so if you’re on the lookout for Ultra2Wide you’d be better advised to check out the other SCSI board on this roundup, the ASUS P2B-S.

But why not follow the good old alphabetical order and work your way through the next board, the ASUS P2B-F, first?