Internals I
The guts of the DigiDice are revealed when the aluminium chassis cover is removed. The front is at the top of the picture. The motherboard is housed below two drive cages, with the 5.25" on the left and 3.5" on the right. The 5.25" cage holds two optical drives (or hard drives with the requisite adapters) and the multi-card reader at the bottom. Even if the reader is removed, there's no real space to install any other device. If you already have one it's a duplication of resources. Otherwise, it's a pretty good idea.
That's pretty much what you see with the two cages removed. ABIT uses its IS-50 i865G Springdale motherboard as the platform for the DigiDice. The i865G is a popular choice currently. It's not hard to see why. Dual-channel DDR400 memory running, support for every Socket-478 CPU under the sun, native SATA support, shedloads of USB2.0 high-speed connectivity. There's also integrated graphics from Intel's Extreme 2 GPU, but we'd put those down as a negative point rather than a worthwhile addition.
ABIT routes the power cabling to the front of the chassis. It's all a little messy. Some spiral wrap would have been a useful idea. However, the CPU ZIF socket is clear of any obstructions, so cooler mounting isn't an awkward task.
ABIT supplies three expansion blanking plates but there's the standard AGP and single PCI slots on the IS-50. The intermediate gap is taken up by USB2.0 headers, a VIA VT6307 2-port FireWire controller and a couple of Realtek chips for sound (ALC650) and 10/100 LAN (RTL8101L). We suppose there's no real need for another PCI slot, and the DigiDice could have been made a shade narrower with better chip placement. Incidentally, the second FireWire port from the VT6307 is available via a header that's located next to the DIMM slots. We can't understand why it wasn't integrated on the I/O panel like most other SFF manufacturers currently do.
The storage section is located in one corner of the IS-50. The ICH5 (non-R) can run on-chip SATA in independent modes. We feel as if ABIT has missed an opportunity by not specifying the ICH5R. There's plenty of internal room in the DigiDice, so mounting 2 hard drives isn't really a problem. Our mind wanders to a couple of new WD 74GB Raptors in RAID0. Standard PATA ports are crammed in right next door the South Bridge.
The white section just below the ICH5 is usually home to the motherboard-to-case pins. It's not used with the DigiDice. Rather, ABIT uses a purpose-built cable (noted as LCM1) that connects the LCD, buttons, rotating wheel and LEDs to the motherboard. That's how the various bits of information are relayed from board sensor to LCD output.
