Foxconn G31MV-K Motherboard

On-board Peripherals

Foxconn G31MV-K uses ICH7 south bridge, providing only two SATA-300 ports with no RAID support, although the south bridge chip supports up to four ports. There is an ATA-100 port supporting up to two optical or hard disk drives. Near the south bridge chip, we can see a header for installing a parallel port (Figure 4), as this port is absent from the rear panel (Figure 5).

The audio system from this motherboard is 5.1, provided by south bridge chip with the aid of a Realtek ALC662-GR codec, which offers a signal/noise ratio (SNR) of 98 dB for the analog outputs, which is above the average for a value motherboard. The SNR for the analog inputs is of 90 dB, which is compatible with a low cost motherboard: to work professionally with analog audio recording (converting LPs and VHS tapes to digital format, for example) you will need a better signal/noise ratio. The analog audio connectors are shared, meaning that if you want to use the six channels you can’t use the "line in" and the microphone inputs. There is no SPDIF output on this motherboard.

This motherboard offers eight USB 2.0 ports, four soldered on the rear panel and four available through internal headers. There is an on-board Gigabit Ethernet port, which is controlled by a Realtek RTL8111B-VC-GR chip. This chip is connected to the system through a x1 PCI Express lane, and therefore the network port can achieve its full 1 Gbps bandwidth. The use of an external controller chip is interesting, since the network interface embedded in the south bridge chip supports only connections up to 100 Mbps.

The rear panel is spartan: PS/2 ports for keyboard and mouse, one serial port, VGA video output, four USB 2.0 ports, one Gigabit Ethernet port with LED indicators and three connectors for analog audio inputs and outputs.