Back Panel I/O

The back I/O panel is rather uninspiring. All the usual ports are there and accounted for. You will find two P/S2 ports, two serial ports, one parallel port, five audio ports, one S/P DIF out connector, two USB ports and a single LAN port. Yes, you read it right. The NF7-S only comes with one LAN port!

The back panel I/O ports

Although the nForce2 MPC-T comes with two LAN MACs (one from NVIDIA and one from 3Com), ABIT decided to go without the second LAN port for the NF7-S. I can't say that was a good move. This is an age where networking is a norm, even at home. The extra LAN port wouldn't have cost much and would have given the NF7-S a fuller feature set. Compared to the SATA controller, the extra LAN port may be less glamourous but it is far more practical.

Only one Realtek 8201BL physical layer interface chip

Additional I/O Connectors

Instead of building them directly in the back panel, ABIT chose to ship the NF7-S with add-on Firewire and USB connectors. These connectors allow the NF7-S to support two Firewire ports as well as two additional USB 2.0 ports.

The Firewire (top) and USB (bottom) connectors

On inspection of the board, I noticed that ABIT provided two USB headers. One header is enough to supply the USB connector, leaving the second header free. Actually, there's a reason why ABIT did not build the Firewire and USB ports directly into the back panel. By placing USB and Firewire headers on the board instead, they allow the user to either use the supplied USB and Firewire connectors or connect the ABIT Media XP front panel to the headers.

   
USB 2.0 and Firewire headers

Jumpers

It's nice to see that ABIT has switched to jumpers with a grip tip, allowing for easier use. They are also yellow in colour, making them easy to spot amidst the confusing landscape of the motherboard.

Nice yellow jumpers