The layout
SOYO's SY-P4X400 DRAGON Ultra is one of the most colorful motherboards I've tested, and the silver PCB will nicely match those swanky aluminum cases that seem to be all the rage these days. But just coloring the PCB isn't enough for SOYO; they also add color to the board's PCI slots and internal USB expansion headers. If nothing else, the board looks good.

All dressed up in silver

The SY-P4X400 DRAGON Ultra's layout is nicely spaced. The IDE RAID and floppy ports aren't pushed all the way down to the bottom of the board where they might have problems reaching drives in full tower cases. Power plug placement is also good, with both plugs close enough to the top of the board to be convenient.

As is common with all recent Pentium 4 motherboards, there's enough room around the CPU socket for chunky Pentium 4 heat sinks. The new standard for retention clips for the Pentium 4 all but forces motherboard manufacturers to clear out plenty of room around the CPU socket, so heat sink installation is a snap.

The SY-P4X400 DRAGON Ultra features five full PCI slots, but if you want to run one of NVIDIA's upcoming double-wide GeForce FX graphics cards or Abit's OTES, you're going to lose access to the neighboring PCI slot.

AGP Pro for the mainstream

The SY-P4X400 DRAGON Ultra sports an AGP Pro slot for workstation-class graphics cards. There's plenty of room around the AGP Pro slot for longer graphics cards like the GeForce4 Ti 4600, and presumably larger workstation cards, but there's no retention clip. As far as I know, the AGP Pro standard doesn't call for a retention clip, and I'm not sure if one could even be incorporated without getting in the way. That makes the SY-P4X400 DRAGON Ultra, and possibly any motherboard featuring an AGP Pro slot, less appropriate for a LAN party box that will be moved around a lot—that is, unless you can rig yourself up a home-brewed AGP retention scheme with duct tape or something.

A standard port array doesn't tell the whole story

The SY-P4X400 DRAGON Ultra's looks pretty standard, but that's only because SOYO has chosen to offer the extras via expansion headers.

Moving USB up front

I've been waiting for a motherboard manufacturer to move a few USB expansion ports to a 3.5" drive bay for a while now, and SOYO has finally delivered. This "Sigma" box gives you access to four of the SY-P4X400 DRAGON Ultra's six USB 2.0 ports and easily plugs into the motherboard's USB expansion ports with a couple of keyed cables so you're not forced to fiddle with wires. As an added bonus, the box also includes activity lights for the USB ports and the motherboard's integrated Ethernet controller.

The Sigma box is beige, which clashes with the board's color scheme, but I can live with it. I'm still in a blissful daze over the fact that it's included at all.

A full array of digital audio ports

Audio enthusiasts will likely eschew the board's C-Media 8738 integrated audio, but at least the SY-P4X400 DRAGON Ultra offers an array of digital input and output ports alongside standard audio jacks. The extra audio ports come via a PCI back plate header, which could be a problem if you have all five PCI slots filled in your case. However, if you're running five PCI slots, chances are that one of those PCI cards has replaced the integrated audio anyway.