ECS 945GCD-M230 User Manual

Preface

Copyright

This publication, including all photographs, illustrations and software, is protected
under international copyright laws, with all rights reserved. Neither this manual, nor
any of the material contained herein, may be reproduced without written consent of
the author.

Version 1.0

Disclaimer

The information in this document is subject to change without notice. The manufac­turer makes no representations or warranties with respect to the contents hereof and
specifically disclaims any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for any
particular purpose. The manufacturer reserves the right to revise this publication and
to make changes from time to time in the content hereof without obligation of the
manufacturer to notify any person of such revision or changes.

Trademark Recognition

Microsoft, MS-DOS and Windows are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corp.
MMX, Pentium, Pentium-II, Pentium-III, Celeron are registered trademarks of Intel

Corporation.
Other product names used in this manual are the properties of their respective

owners and are acknowledged.

Federal Communications Commission (FCC)

This equipment has been tested and found to comply with the limits for a Class B
digital device, pursuant to Part 15 of the FCC Rules. These limits are designed to
provide reasonable protection against harmful interference in a residential installa­tion. This equipment generates, uses, and can radiate radio frequency energy and, if
not installed and used in accordance with the instructions, may cause harmful inter­ference to radio communications. However, there is no guarantee that interference
will not occur in a particular installation. If this equipment does cause harmful
interference to radio or television reception, which can be determined by turning the
equipment off and on, the user is encouraged to try to correct the interference by one
or more of the following measures:

• Reorient or relocate the receiving antenna

• Increase the separation between the equipment and the receiver

• Connect the equipment onto an outlet on a circuit different from that to
which the receiver is connected

• Consult the dealer or an experienced radio/TV technician for help

Shielded interconnect cables and a shielded AC power cable must be employed with
this equipment to ensure compliance with the pertinent RF emission limits govern­ing this device. Changes or modifications not expressly approved by the system’s
manufacturer could void the user’s authority to operate the equipment.

Preface

ii

Declaration of Conformity

This device complies with part 15 of the FCC rules. Operation is subject to the
following conditions:

• This device may not cause harmful interference, and

• This device must accept any interference received, including interfer­ence that may cause undesired operation

Canadian Department of Communications

This class B digital apparatus meets all requirements of the Canadian Interference­causing Equipment Regulations.

Cet appareil numérique de la classe B respecte toutes les exigences du Réglement sur
le matériel brouilieur du Canada.

About the Manual

The manual consists of the following:

Chapter 1
Introducing the Motherboard

Chapter 2
Installing the Motherboard

Chapter 3
Using BIOS

Chapter 4
Using the Motherboard Software

Describes features of the
motherboard.

Go to

Describes installation of
motherboard components.

Go to

Provides information on us­ing the BIOS Setup Utility.

Go to

Describes the motherboard
software

Go to

H

H

H

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page 1

page 7

page 25

page 43

Preface

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Preface i

iii

Chapter 1

Introducing the Motherboard 1

Introduction......................................................................................1

Feature...............................................................................................2

Motherboard Components.............................................................4

Chapter 2

Installing the Motherboard 7

Safety Precautions...........................................................................7

Choosing a Computer Case............................................................7

Installing the Motherboard in a Case............................................7

Checking Jumper Settings...............................................................8

Setting Jumpers...................................................................8

Checking Jumper Settings...................................................9

Jumper Settings...................................................................9

Installing Hardware........................................................................10

Installing Memory Modules...............................................10

Expansion Slots..................................................................14

Connecting Optional Devices............................................16

Installing a Hard Disk Drive/CD-ROM/SA T A Hard Drive...18

Connecting I/O Devices................................................................20

Connecting Case Components.....................................................21

Front Panel Header............................................................24

Chapter 3 25

Using BIOS 25

About the Setup Utility ................................................................ 25

The Standard Configuration..............................................25

Entering the Setup Utility...................................................25

Using BIOS......................................................................................27

Standard CMOS Setup......................................................28

Advanced Setup.................................................................30

Advanced Chipset Setup....................................................32

Integrated Peripherals.......................................................33

Power Management Setup.................................................34

PCI/PnP Setup...................................................................35

PC Health Status...............................................................36

1

7 7

7

7 7

iv

Frequency/Voltage Contr ol.................................................38

Load Default Settings.........................................................39

Supervisor Password.........................................................39

User Password...................................................................40

Save & Exit Setup...............................................................40

Exit Without Saving.............................................................40

Updating the BIOS..............................................................41

Chapter 4

43 43

43

43 43

Using the Motherboard Software 43

About the Software CD-ROM......................................................43

Auto-installing under Windows V ista........................................43

Running Setup.....................................................................44

Manual Installation........................................................................48

Utility Software Reference............................................................48

Chapter 1

Introducing the Motherboard

Introduction

1

Thank you for choosing 945GCD-M230 motherboard of great performance and
with enhanced function. This motherboard has onboard Intel® Atom
a Micro-ATX form factor of 225 x 170 mm.

The motherboard incorporates the Intel 945GC Northbridge (NB) and ICH7
Southbridge (SB) chipsets. The Northbridge supports a Front Side Bus (FSB) fre­quency of 533 MHz using a scalable FSB Vcc_CPU. The memory controller supports
DDR2 memory DIMM frequencies of 533. It supports two DDR2 socket with up to
maximum memory of 4 GB. One PCI Express x16 slot, intended for Graphics
Interface, is fully compliant to the PCI Express Gen1 (version 1.0a).

The ICH7 Southbridge supports one PCI slot which is PCI v2.3 compliant. In addi­tion, one PCI Express x1 is supported. It implements an EHCI compliant interface
that provides 480 Mb/s bandwidth for 8 USB 2.0 ports (4 USB ports and 2 USB 2.0
headers support additional 4 USB ports). The Southbridge integrates a Serial ATA
host controller, supporting three SATA ports with maximum transfer rate up to 3.0
Gb/s each.

The motherboard is equipped with advanced full set of I/O ports in the rear panel,
including PS/2 mouse and keyboard connectors, one LPT port, one serial port, one
VGA port, four USB ports, one LAN port and audio jacks for microphone, line-in and
line-out.

TM

230 CPU with

Introducing the Motherboard

2

Feature

Processor

This motherboard uses onboard Intel® Atom
features:

• Onboard Intel® Atom

• Supports a system bus (FSB) of 533 MHz

• Supports “Hyper-Threading” technology CPU

“Hyper-Threading” technology enables the operating system into thinking it’s
hooked up to two processors, allowing two threads to be run in parallel, both on
separate “logical” processors within the same physical processor.

TM

230, 1.60GHz CPU speed with 1MB cache

TM

230 CPU that carries the following

Chipset

The 945GC Northbridge (NB) and ICH7 Southbridge (SB) chipsets are based on an
innovative and scalable architecture with proven reliability and performance.

945GC (NB)

ICH7 (SB)

• Supports 32-bit host bus addressing

• 2 GB/s point-to-point Direct Media Interface (DMI) to
ICH7 (1 Gb/s each direction)

• Supports 256-Mb, 512-Mb and 1-Gb DDR2 technolo­gies for x8 and x16 devices

• Supports high quality 3D setup, Render Engine and
high-quality texture engine

• Enhanced DMA Controller , interrupt controller, and timer
functions

• Compliant with PCI Express Base Specification, Revi­sion 1.0a

• Compliant with PCI v2.3 specification

• Integrated SATA 3.0 Gb/s Host Controller

• Integrated USB 2.0 Host Controller supporting up to
eight USB 2.0 ports

• Integrated IDE controller supports Ultra A T A 100/66/33

Memory

• Supports DDR2 533 DDR2 SDRAM

•Accommodates two unbuffered DIMMs

• Maximum memory size up to 4 GB

Audio

The onboard Audio provides the following features:

• 5.1 Channel High Definition Audio Codec

• Exceeds Microsoft Windows Logo Program (WLP) Requirements

• ADCs support 44.1K/48K/96K/192KHz sample rate

• Power Support: Digital: 3.3V; Analog: 5.0V

Introducing the Motherboard

Onboard LAN

The onboard LAN controller provides either of the following features:

• Compliant with IEEE 802.3u for 10/100 Mbps ethernet, IEEE 802.3ab
for 1000 Mbps ethernet

• PCI Express base 1.1 compliant

• Supports Wake-On-LAN (WOL) and AMD magic packet TM power
management

• IEEE 802.3ab auto-negotiation support

• IEEE 802.3x compliant flow control support

Expansion Options

The motherboard comes with the following expansion options:

• One 32-bit PCI v2.3 compliant slot

• One PCI Express x16 slot for Graphics Interface

• One PCI Express x1 slots

• One IDE connector that supports two IDE devices

• Three 7-pin SATA connectors

The motherboard supports UDMA bus mastering with transfer rates of 133/100/
66 Mb/s.

Integrated I/O

The motherboard has a full set of I/O ports and connectors:

• Two PS/2 ports for mouse and keyboard

• One LPT port

• One serial port

• One VGA port

• Four USB ports

• One LAN port

• Audio jacks for microphone, line-in and line-out

3

BIOS Firmware

This motherboard uses AMI BIOS that enables users to configure many system
features including the following:

• Power management

• Wake-up alarms

• CPU parameters

• CPU and memory timing

The firmware can also be used to set parameters for different processor clock
speeds.

1. Some hardware specifications and software items are subject to change
without prior notice.

2. Due to chipset limitation, we recommend that motherboard be oper­ated in the ambiance between 0 and 50 °C.

3. To achieve better performance and air flow, we suggest that you use
a system fan on this motherboard.

Introducing the Motherboard

4

Motherboard Components

Introducing the Motherboard

Table of Motherboard Components

LABEL COMPONENTS

1. CPU_FAN CPU cooling fan connector

2. DDR2_1~2 240-pin DDR2 SDRAM slots

3. ATX Standard 24-pin ATX power connector

4. IDE Primary IDE connector

5. F_USB1~2 Front panel USB headers

6. USBPWR_F Front panel USB power select jumper

7. SATA1~3 Serial ATA connectors

8. F_PANEL Front panel switch/LED header

9. CLR_CMOS Clear CMOS jumper

10. SPDIFO SPDIF out header

11. CD_IN Analog audio input connector

12. F_AUDIO Front panel audio header

13. SPK Internal speaker header

14. PCI 32-bit add-on card slots

15. PCIE PCI Express x1 slot

16. PCIE x16 PCI Express x16 graphics card slot

17. USBPWR_R Rear USB/PS2 power select jumper

18. CASE_OPEN Chassis detect header

19. ATX12V 4-pin +12V power connector

5

This concludes Chapter 1. The next chapter explains how to install the motherboard.

Introducing the Motherboard

6

Memo

Introducing the Motherboard

Chapter 2

Installing the Motherboard

Safety Precautions

• Follow these safety precautions when installing the motherboard

• Wear a grounding strap attached to a grounded device to avoid dam­age from static electricity

• Discharge static electricity by touching the metal case of a safely
grounded object before working on the motherboard

• Leave components in the static-proof bags they came in

• Hold all circuit boards by the edges. Do not bend circuit boards

Choosing a Computer Case

There are many types of computer cases on the market. The motherboard complies
with the specifications for the Micro-ATX system case. First, some features on the
motherboard are implemented by cabling connectors on the motherboard to indica­tors and switches on the system case. Make sure that your case supports all the
features required. Secondly, this motherboard supports two enhanced IDE drives.
Make sure that your case has sufficient power and space for all drives that you intend
to install.

Most cases have a choice of I/O templates in the rear panel. Make sure that the I/O
template in the case matches the I/O ports installed on the rear edge of the
motherboard.

This motherboard carries a Micro-ATX form factor of 225 x 170 mm. Choose a case
that accommodates this form factor.

7

Installing the Motherboard in a Case

Refer to the following illustration and instructions for installing the motherboard in
a case.

Most system cases have mounting brackets installed in the case, which correspond
the holes in the motherboard. Place the motherboard over the mounting brackets
and secure the motherboard onto the mounting brackets with screws.

Ensure that your case has an I/O template that supports the I/O ports and expansion
slots on your motherboard.

Installing the Motherboard

8

Do not over-tighten the screws as this can stress the motherboard.

Checking Jumper Settings

This section explains how to set jumpers for correct configuration of the motherboard.

Setting Jumpers

Use the motherboard jumpers to set system configuration options. Jumpers with
more than one pin are numbered. When setting the jumpers, ensure that the jumper
caps are placed on the correct pins.

The illustrations show a 2-pin jumper. When
the jumper cap is placed on both pins, the
jumper is SHORT. If you remove the jumper
cap, or place the jumper cap on just one pin,
the jumper is OPEN.

This illustration shows a 3-pin jumper. Pins
1 and 2 are SHORT.

SHORT OPEN

Installing the Motherboard

Checking Jumper Settings

The following illustration shows the location of the motherboard jumpers. Pin 1 is
labeled.

Jumper Settings

Jumper Type Description Setting (default)

1-2: NORMAL

CLR_CMOS

3-pin

CLEAR CMOS

2-3: CLEAR

Before clearing the
CMOS, make sure to
turn the system off.

1

CLR_CMOS

9

Rear USB/PS2

USBPWR_F

USBPWR_R

1.

2.

3.

3-pin

Power Select
Jumper

Front Panel

3-pin

USB Power
Select Jumper

To avoid the system instability after clearing CMOS, we recommend users
to enter the main BIOS setting page to “Load Default Settings” and
then “Save & Exit Setup”.

Make sure the power supply provides enough VCC5_DUAL voltage be­fore selecting the VCC5_DUAL function.

It is required that users place the USBPWR_F & USBPWR_R cap onto 2­3 pin rather than 1-2 pin as default if you want to wake up the computer
by USB/PS2 KB/Mouse.

1-2: VCC5
2-3: VCC5_DUAL

1-2: VCC5
2-3: VCC5_DUAL

Installing the Motherboard

1

USBPWR_F

1

USBPWR_R

10

Installing Hardware

Installing Memory Modules

This motherboard accommodates two memory module. It can support two 240-pin
DDR2 533. The total memory capacity is 4 GB.

DDR2 SDRAM memory module table

Memory module

Memory Bus

DDR2 533 266 MHz

Do not remove any memory module from its antistatic packaging
until you are ready to install it on the motherboard. Handle the
modules only by their edges. Do not touch the components or metal
parts. Always wear a grounding strap when you handle the modules.

Installation Procedure

Refer to the following to install the memory modules.

1 This motherboard supports unbuffered DDR2 SDRAM .
2 Push the latches on each side of the DIMM slot down.
3 Align the memory module with the slot. The DIMM slots are keyed with

notches and the DIMMs are keyed with cutouts so that they can only be
installed correctly.

4 Check that the cutouts on the DIMM module edge connector match the

notches in the DIMM slot.

5 Install the DIMM module into the slot and press it firmly down until it

seats correctly. The slot latches are levered upwards and latch on to
the edges of the DIMM.

Installing the Motherboard

Table A: DDR2 (memory module) QVL (Qualified V endor List)

The following DDR2 1066/800/667/533 memory modules have been tested and
qualified for use with this motherboard.

Type Size Vendor Module Name

Samsung PC2-4200U-4444-10-B1

A-data

Kingmax

Apacer

Micron

PSC

Ramxel RML1520M38D6F-667

Samsung PC2-5300U-555-12-D3

Sync MAX 04400WB01 R050008A

Transcend JetRam J12Q3AB-6

Apacer

AM4B5708GQJS7E0631F

Corsair

Hexon

Kingston

Micron

MT8HTF12864AY-667E1

PSC

Samsung

GOLD BAR M378T2863DZS 0742

Aeneon

Apacer

Hexon

Hynix

HYMP125U64AP8-Y5 AB-A 0623

Kingston

LeadMax

PSC

Qimonda

HYS64T256020EU-3S-C2

Aeneon

Vitesta

KLBD48F-A8KE4

78.91G92.9K5

MT4HTF6464AY-667E1

AL6E8E63J-6E1

AU01GE667C5KBGC

78.01G9O.9K5
VS1GB667D2

HYNT7AUDR-30M48

KVR667D2N5

AL7E8E63B-6E1T

AL7E8F63J-6E1
AL7E8F73C-6E1

AET860UD00-30DB08X

78.A1G9O.9K4

HYNT8AUDR-30M88

KVR667D2N5/2G

PC2-5300U

AL8E8F73C-6E1

AET960UD00-30D

DDR2 533

DDR2 667

512 MB

1 GB

512 MB

1 GB

2 GB

4 GB

11

Installing the Motherboard

12

Type Size Vendor Module Name

KVR800D2N5/512 1.8V 9905315-019.A02LF

MT8HTF6464AY-80ED4
HYS72T64000HU-2.5-B

M2GVD6G3I41P0U1E5E

AET760UD00-30DB97X
AET760UD00-25DC08X

AU01GE800C5KBGC

78.01GAO.9K5

78.01GA0.9L5

AU1G082-800P000

Geil Millenary

ELPT7AUDR-25M48

HYMP112U64CP8-S6 AB

04701G16CZ5U2G

04701G16CY5U2A

KLDD48F-B8KU5 NGES

KVR800D2N5/1G 1.8V 9905316-054.A01LF

NT1GT64U88D0BY-AD
RML1320EH38D7F-800

GOLD BAR M378T2953EZ3-CE7 0726

M378T2863EHS-CF7 0849

SP001GBLRU800S01

507301-1571

GU341G0ALEPR6B2C6CE

DDR2 800

512 MB

1 GB

Kingston

Micron

Qimonda

A-DATA

Aeneon

Apacer

APOGEE

Geil

Hexon

Hynix

Infinity

KingMax
Kingston

Nanya

Ramaxel

Samsung

Silicon

Power

Transcend

Unifosa

Installing the Motherboard