Layout of the DP533

The DP533 has a respectable layout though it falls short of the layout that Supermicro uses for the X5DAE. Starting with the upper left hand corner, you’ll find your normal selection of rear ports. The rear I/O ports have a couple of pretty cool features not normally found on server boards. First there are four USB 2.0 ports in the rear. This will satisfy most of you USB freaks out there. The next nice addition is the inclusion of a S/PDIF port. If you’ve got an external Dolby Digital Decoder then hooking a digital cable between the S/PDIF and the receiver would be an nice setup for DD 5.1 decoding of DVDs on this board.

Rear I/O Ports

Right next to the I/O ports is the 24 pin 12 volt connector. As you can see in the picture below, this places the connector smack dab in between the I/O ports and the first CPU socket. This isn’t the most ideal location since you’ll need to snake the power cable around the processor.

Here's a shot of the sockets:

Sockets for the XEONs

Towards the center of the board is the E7505 chipset which consists of a number of pieces. You’ll see the Memory Controller Hub (MCH) under a passive heatsink. A passive heatsink also covers the 64 bit Intel P64H2 hub. The ICH4 chip sits off to the side a bit.

PCI Chipset

Looking towards the upper left hand corner, we find the four DDR memory slots. The board supports up to 266 MHz DDR chips (PC2100) which can be either unbuffered and ECC supporting. You’ll need to install memory in pairs as in the X5DAE. Banks 0 or 1 must be populated with memory sticks. A maximum total of 8GB can be installed on this board.

Memory Slots

The IDE channels and the floppy interface are found on the lower right hand corner of the motherboard. This isn’t too bad of a location though placing the IDE channels further up towards the top right would be ideal for those who have large tower cases. Below the floppy interface is the 1394 and USB 2.0 connectors.

IDE and Floppy interface

Rounding things out we have the PCI and AGP slots on the lower left hand corner. The board supports two 32 bit 33 MHz PCI slots, two 64 bit 100MHz PCI-X slots and one 64 bit 133 MHz PCI-X slot. The CD-IN and AUX-IN connectors are to the left of the AGP/PCI slot if you are planning to use the on board sound.

AGP/PCI slots	CD / AUX-IN

Overall the Iwill layout isn’t too bad except for my gripe with the location of the EPS 12V connector and the IDE channels. The inclusion of four USB ports and the S/PDIF port nearly makes up for that. However in the end, you will probably have a case that has abundant room to work with so none of this may matter all that much.

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