Board layout
With so many integrated peripherals, it takes a little work to squeeze everything onto the board. Still, Foxconn has done a pretty good job with the 755A01's layout. The board doesn't look half-bad, either.

Other than an abundance of blue, the 755A01's aesthetic doesn't appear to follow much of a consistent theme. Not that I mind, though. Of the half dozen ATX cases I have in the Benchmarking Sweatshop, only one has a window. And really, the 755A01's color scheme doesn't have to be fashionable to be functional. With important ports and slots identified by unique colors, it's easy to spot where everything is. I have to admit a certain attraction to the board's celeste AGP slot and capacitors, even if it's pure coincidence that the color matches Bianchi's classic road bikes.

On a little less superficial front, the 755A01's power connector placement could use some work. Both power plugs are a ways from the top edge of the board, creating potential for a mess of cables around the CPU socket. Careful routing, a sheathed power supply cable, and a couple of zip ties should keep cable clutter to a minimum, but it would take less work if the power plugs lined the top edge of the board.

Like most Athlon 64 boards, the 755A01's CPU socket is surrounded by AMD's new heat sink retention bracket. The bracket is screwed onto a metal plate that sits under the board, and the whole assembly can be removed to accommodate non-standard heatsink designs.

Mmmmmmm... Celeste.

The 755A01 has loads of room around the AGP slot for longer graphics cards, and there's more than enough clearance to swap out DIMMs without removing the AGP card. Unfortunately, I'm not so keen on the AGP slot's retention mechanism, which can be awkward to reach with cards that have larger heat sinks, like the Radeon 9800 XT and GeForce FX 5950 Ultra. The retention mechanism holds AGP cards in place just fine, but my fingers are too stubby to disengage the clip easily.

Like just about every other Socket 754 Athlon 64 board, the 755A01 serves up three DIMM slots. Each slot supports a gig of memory, but the only 1GB DIMMs Foxconn has qualified for the board are DDR333 sticks. If you want to run DDR400 modules, you'll have to roll the dice with unqualified memory sticks or settle for 512MB per slot.

In the storage department, the 755A01 clusters its ATA/133 and Serial ATA ports along the edge of the board where they'll create the least amount of cable clutter. I'm not wild about the hot pink color for the SATA ports, though, if only because Foxconn doesn't bundle matching cables with the board.

The 755A01's port cluster is loaded with goodies, including PS/2 mouse and keyboard ports, parallel and serial ports, an Ethernet jack, a Firewire port, four USB ports, and a trio of audio plugs. There are on-board headers for an additional four USB ports and one more Firewire port, though Foxconn doesn't include any header hardware in the box. Given the popularity of case-mounted peripheral ports and USB memory card readers, I'm inclined to forgive Foxconn for not including PCI back plate expansion ports with the board. Keep in mind that this is a sub-$90 package.