Date: August 5th, 2003
Article by: Nathan Glentworth (Owner, Head Editor & Hardware Reviewer)
Product was donated by: SoyoUSA
<--Shop for this item

PRODUCT COMPOSITION

For a bundle price of about US$190-200, you will receive..

A user manual, an installation guide for the BayOne(tm) front panel, a bonus CD filled with useful Symantec software, a driver CD, a rear I/O shield plate and a case badge.

With the abundant onboard storage controllers, Soyo included four SATA, three 80pin ATA-133 and a floppy cable. The one product I was looking for was the four SATA power cables to compliment the data but they were not included. For this review I had to steal one from another motherboard just to get things fired up. I'd hate to be the poor guy that buys this motherboard and a couple of OEM SATA drives only to find out that he can't assemble his system.

To take advantage of all the onboard sound capabilities, a rear PCI bracket containing the centre and subwoofer outputs along with the digital optical and composite input and output connectors are provided.

The included BayOne(tm) front panel has pretty well every possible multimedia connection. If you have a digital camera or a digital camcorder, the included USB 2.0, Firewire and flashcard connections will have your photos and videos saved to your harddrive without having to reach around to the back of your case for a connection.

The Dragon 2 is built on Soyo's Arctic Silver PCB which is a far stretch from the boring green substrate of a couple years ago. Although I personally like the silver, I found that the looks were diminished quite a bit by Soyo's choice of PCI and DDR slot colors. Even black would have been an improvement.