- Apr 6, 2001
- 2,262
- 326
- 126
Before I give you my review, let me give you some background information. I'm a 38 year young Software Engineer that has never, until last night, built a system from the ground up. I've done a great number of upgrades to my old system, but other than that, that's it. Also, since I'm on a budget, I planned on robbing components from my old computer until they can be replaced at a later time. Now for the review.
This motherboard looks well laid out. The CPU socket has plenty of extra space around it. My fat stubby fingers had no trouble at all attaching the huge Alpha heatsink and fan onto the CPU.
6 PCI slots and 1 AGP slot ensure plenty of slots for future upgrades. I'm sure glad they didn't put a stinkin' AMR slot on this board. If you search on the web you can't even find a modem to plug in it.
Only two memory slots. Installation of the DDR SDRAM sticks was a little hard. Don't get me wrong, there is plenty of room. Once I overcame my fear of breaking a stick, with a little more force, they popped in.
The jumpers and the motherboard power socket were all well placed. By referencing the manual, I had no problem finding and setting any jumper I wished.
The connectors for the Modem, CD-ROM, and Auxillary for the onboard sound could have been placed in a better position on the board. If you have a card plugged into the first PCI slot(the one next to the AGP slot) is is very difficult to plug into those connectors. I got tired of messing with it, removed the card from the PCI slot, plugged in the Modem and CD-ROM sound cords, then reinstalled the PCI card.
The sound quality of the onboard sound is O.K. If you're like me, you'll probably upgrade to something better in the near future.
Four USB ports. You can never have enough USB ports but 4 is still great.
The manual was put together rather well. It was easy to read and easy reference.
The BIOS has every setting imaginable in it, and everything is very easy to find. The settings look like an overclockers wet dream.
It took me a little over 4 hours to completely assemble the whole system. Everything worked on the first try. I've never had anything work the first time for me, but this thing is flawless. For me, never ever doing anything this before, all I can say is that I'm on an addrenalen( I can't spell) high. Even though this systems screams, it still took me probably another 3 hours to load all my software( I got to stop buying software).
Now for overclocking. I wasn't really planning on overclocking, but since I was on a roll, why not see what I can do. I visited a couple of different forums to find out how and what to set and all the settings. Once I got the information I was loaded for bear. I won't go into the gory setting details since you can find them anywhere. THIS MOTHERBOARD ROCKS!!! My AMD Athlon 1.2 GHz 266 FSB is running stable at 1.5 GHz(10@150). I ran the Sandra burnin for 3 hours and nothing failed. I could have pushed it further but I'm a chicken s##t, and since this is my first system, I didn't want to burn it up. I am a little concerned about the CPU temperature being 49 degrees C. I checked it right after running Sandra. I'm not sure what is normal so I'll have to do a little more research. If you know what is normal, please let me know.
Here is a good system test to do. Take a photograph and scan it in at the maximum dpi resolution. Watch your hardware monitor and see what it does. The memory utilization on my machine peaked at 56 percent(I'm glad I bought 2 sticks of memory instead of one). The CPU utilization maxed out at 100 percent for 15 minutes. Wow, I feal sorry for my old Pentium 166 MHz system. I was always stressing it out.
Final words. All I can say is that this motherboard is extremely stable, easy for any newbie like me to set up, and has great overclocking potential.
My system:
Inwin S508 case with 300 watt ps
Additional Antec Case fan
Epox 8K7A motherboard
AMD Athlon 1.2 GHz 266 FSB 10@150
Alpha 7HO HSF
512 MB of Crucial PC2100 DDR SDRAM
3DFX Voodoo3 2000 PCI video card (will be replaced soon)
Creative Labs Modem Blaster 56K PCI
Samsung 19" 950p monitor
HP 9350i 10x4x32 CD-RW
Sony 8x CD-ROM (will be replaced with a DVD-ROM soon)
Standard 102 Keyboard
Kensington USB Optical mouse
ScanDisk USB Flashcard reader
Paperport 6000 scanner
Cannon BJC-620 printer
This motherboard looks well laid out. The CPU socket has plenty of extra space around it. My fat stubby fingers had no trouble at all attaching the huge Alpha heatsink and fan onto the CPU.
6 PCI slots and 1 AGP slot ensure plenty of slots for future upgrades. I'm sure glad they didn't put a stinkin' AMR slot on this board. If you search on the web you can't even find a modem to plug in it.
Only two memory slots. Installation of the DDR SDRAM sticks was a little hard. Don't get me wrong, there is plenty of room. Once I overcame my fear of breaking a stick, with a little more force, they popped in.
The jumpers and the motherboard power socket were all well placed. By referencing the manual, I had no problem finding and setting any jumper I wished.
The connectors for the Modem, CD-ROM, and Auxillary for the onboard sound could have been placed in a better position on the board. If you have a card plugged into the first PCI slot(the one next to the AGP slot) is is very difficult to plug into those connectors. I got tired of messing with it, removed the card from the PCI slot, plugged in the Modem and CD-ROM sound cords, then reinstalled the PCI card.
The sound quality of the onboard sound is O.K. If you're like me, you'll probably upgrade to something better in the near future.
Four USB ports. You can never have enough USB ports but 4 is still great.
The manual was put together rather well. It was easy to read and easy reference.
The BIOS has every setting imaginable in it, and everything is very easy to find. The settings look like an overclockers wet dream.
It took me a little over 4 hours to completely assemble the whole system. Everything worked on the first try. I've never had anything work the first time for me, but this thing is flawless. For me, never ever doing anything this before, all I can say is that I'm on an addrenalen( I can't spell) high. Even though this systems screams, it still took me probably another 3 hours to load all my software( I got to stop buying software).
Now for overclocking. I wasn't really planning on overclocking, but since I was on a roll, why not see what I can do. I visited a couple of different forums to find out how and what to set and all the settings. Once I got the information I was loaded for bear. I won't go into the gory setting details since you can find them anywhere. THIS MOTHERBOARD ROCKS!!! My AMD Athlon 1.2 GHz 266 FSB is running stable at 1.5 GHz(10@150). I ran the Sandra burnin for 3 hours and nothing failed. I could have pushed it further but I'm a chicken s##t, and since this is my first system, I didn't want to burn it up. I am a little concerned about the CPU temperature being 49 degrees C. I checked it right after running Sandra. I'm not sure what is normal so I'll have to do a little more research. If you know what is normal, please let me know.
Here is a good system test to do. Take a photograph and scan it in at the maximum dpi resolution. Watch your hardware monitor and see what it does. The memory utilization on my machine peaked at 56 percent(I'm glad I bought 2 sticks of memory instead of one). The CPU utilization maxed out at 100 percent for 15 minutes. Wow, I feal sorry for my old Pentium 166 MHz system. I was always stressing it out.
Final words. All I can say is that this motherboard is extremely stable, easy for any newbie like me to set up, and has great overclocking potential.
My system:
Inwin S508 case with 300 watt ps
Additional Antec Case fan
Epox 8K7A motherboard
AMD Athlon 1.2 GHz 266 FSB 10@150
Alpha 7HO HSF
512 MB of Crucial PC2100 DDR SDRAM
3DFX Voodoo3 2000 PCI video card (will be replaced soon)
Creative Labs Modem Blaster 56K PCI
Samsung 19" 950p monitor
HP 9350i 10x4x32 CD-RW
Sony 8x CD-ROM (will be replaced with a DVD-ROM soon)
Standard 102 Keyboard
Kensington USB Optical mouse
ScanDisk USB Flashcard reader
Paperport 6000 scanner
Cannon BJC-620 printer
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