The physical installation of the AOpen AX3S Pro went very smoothly, with the only issue being the board's slight larger width. This can make it a tighter squeeze in smaller cases, and also causes a bit of board overlap in relation to the ATX case mounting screws. When using a standard heatsink, the CPU install is surprisingly easy and the extra space around the DIMM sockets makes adding memory a snap. Installing the AGP card was a bit more difficult, given the strange positioning of the IDE connectors. The IDE cords can hamper AGP card installs, as well as stretch the limit of your secondary IDE cable. When used in a mid-tower case, the secondary IDE cable (attached to DVD and CD-RW 5.25” devices) didn't have a lot of slack once it was finally attached to the board.

As we mentioned previously, AOpen's motherboard documentation continues to be right at the top of the class. The poster-sized Easy Installation Guide has more than enough information for the seasoned veteran, while the extensive 175-page user manual contains all the detailed information, in a very well organized format. Those inexperienced with motherboard installations will love the manual's large color diagrams and its full coverage of hardware setup, BIOS options and driver installation.

Although AOpen is certainly not on the cutting edge of software BIOS implementations, their Pro line of boards do offer enough options to satisfy all but the most demanding user. The Award BIOS includes several RAS/CAS memory timing speeds, as well as similar settings for the optional 4 MB of on-board display cache. There is full support for power management, along with hardware and temperature monitoring through a Winbond 83627 chip.

The AOpen AX3S Pro follows their standard Pro format of allowing FSB and voltage adjustments within the Frequency/Voltage Control portion of the system BIOS. At the 66 and 133 MHz hardware jumper settings, there is a small range of FSB speeds available that relate to the AGP/PCI divider selected. The AX3S Pro offers a 166 MHz maximum FSB speed when using the 133 MHz jumper setting. Strangely, instead of using a separate selection for the memory speed, the BIOS includes duplicate FSB speeds with differing system memory speeds. This can get a bit confusing, though the resulting memory and PCI speeds are also displayed in the Frequency/Voltage Control section of the BIOS.

At the 100 MHz default speed, the FSB options open up quite a bit and include >100 MHz speeds that still use standard AGP and PCI speeds. The 133 MHz overclock runs at standard AGP and PCI speeds, and higher FSB speeds up to 150 MHz are also available and they share the PC133 AGP/PCI dividers as well. This aspect of the board was tested extensively, and it seems that when overclocking a 100 MHz CPU, the system BIOS is able to override the hardware jumper settings that determine the AGP and PCI speeds.

Full control of CPU core voltage is also a feature of the AX3S Pro's Award BIOS. Instead of using set ranges for each CPU, AOpen allows users to choose any of the available core voltage options, from 1.3V to 3.5V. This can be a real boon to experienced overclockers, but by the same token, inexperienced users could choose a high voltage setting and proceed to fry their CPU. The default CPU voltage is displayed alongside the user-defined setting in the BIOS, and as an added safety net, both the detected and selected CPU core voltages are displayed when the PC boots.