Sapphire Pure 785G Motherboard

  Opening up the packaging and looking into the box I was a little disappointed with what was inside. All that was included was a manual, install CD, two black SATA cables and the MB I/O plate. I didn’t expect a toy chest full of gizmos but seeing that this is a “Pure” motherboard and to me that usually denotes a sort of elite system, a deluxe package you could say, I figured they would cover all the bases for connections. With the “Pure” name there really should be at least a couple more SATA cables, a black IDE ribbon cable and a PCI breakout for added USB ports on the back side. Not to mention a CD/DVD with some extras. Although this minor detail isn’t a deal killer I was pretty disappointed in included accessories. 

  Taking a detailed looked at the Motherboard here you get a close up look at the AM3 socket. The Retaining bracket for the cooler for AMD had been the same for what seems like ages as it would go in the world of technology. The ol’ center clip method is at least a bit less a pain as far as installation goes. The newer Intel brackets usually require multiple screws and custom back plates and nimble fingers to get it all together. However once in they feel more secure. AMD’s bracket retention never feels as secure to me. I’ve never had a problem with it but I can’t help but feel worried in the back of my mind during transports. Looking to the Left of the socket you see tjny capacitors and the 8-pin power connection. To the left of that is all the Motherboards I/O devices and ports. As you can see for the integrated graphics you have your choice of a HDMI, DVI or VGA port. Also standards like PS/2 Keyboard and Mouse connections, Four USB 2.0/1.1 connections,Gigabit LAN, and your audio ports.

  Directly under the CPU you have the 785G chipset that is passively cooled with an aluminum heatsink. The “south bridge” SB710 chipset which is located between the PCI-Express, Legacy PCI slotsand the 6 Serial ATA2 3Gb/d connectors. The south bridge is also cooled passively with a lower profile aluminum heat sink. Also along the bottom edge of the board are two USB pin outs as well as the HD audio pin outs.  

  Taking another quick overall look at the board I have a couple minor points to discuss with the layout of this board. You may notice that the board only provides two Memory slots. Although this board is capable of supporting up two 8Gb of RAM I think a lot of people who want to max this out are going to be put off by the idea of two 4GB sticks and would instead prefer to have the option to get four 2GB sticks instead. This is really a minor gripe but it is one of those things that just seem “standard” on boards these days. The other thing I notice with the memory is that it seems placed very close to the CPU socket. I suspect those who have taller RAM with the heat spreaders paired with large coolers are going to have conflicts. 

  The last and final bit of criticism here would be of course the decision to include two legacy PCI ports instead of say another PCI-express 1x, 2x or 4x slot. Although this is acceptable for many boards I don’t think it is acceptable here. Being that this board is geared more toward a media PC or a compact gaming PC additional PCI-Express ports would be more desirable.  

So now that we have given the board a once over lets install this into a case and fire it up.