The Board Made Love To The Case - IT FIT PERFECT!
Written: May 25 '00 (Updated May 25 '00)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Price, Abit Name, Expandibility, Ease Of Use, Simple Installation & Hook-Up
Cons: Retention Kit Flop (read below)
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| shauncool's Full Review: Abit VA6 |
I have previously reviewed two other Abit boards, BX6 and BE6, and those reviews, unfortunately, got very, very lengthy! I will do my very best to make sure that this review is direct and makes the points that I want to make – I guess we’ll all see what my best can be!
Introduction
The VA 6 is one of Abit’s newest motherboards. As far as Abit goes, this is a low-priced, low-end board... but don’t let that fool you! This baby really packs a punch! Abit released this board on 12/24/1999 so it is ‘essentially’ state-of-the art. One of the reasons that I like Abit boards is that they constantly are releasing bios upgrades. The most recent one for this board is 2/25/2000.
A month ago I sat down to order the parts to build a computer for my father and I was fascinated at the features of this board along with the low price ($69.00). Combine that with Abit’s name (reputation and my personal experiences) and I was hooked – without a doubt this is the board I was going to install into the new computer!
Main Features
RAM: This board has the standard three DIMM slots supporting PC66, PC100 or PC133 FSB. With these three slots you can install as little as 32MB or as much as 768 – more than enough leeway for anybody! I chose to install a single 128MB PC133 chip, which leaves two slots open for future upgrades when RAM becomes cheap as dirt.
CPU: The VA6 supports ANY Slot-1 Intel Chip (Pentium IIs, IIIs, and Celerons), and will also support any PPGA (socket 370) Celerons and Pentiums with a special adapter which costs about $15.00.
STORAGE: The VA6 comes with an onboard UDMA-66 controller supporting up to four devices. This is more than enough for my father’s needs, as all I installed was a 40X CDROM and a 15GB UDMA66 hard drive. There is still room for a DVDROM drive and a second hard drive at a later time, if need be.
VIDEO CONNECTOR: As is standard with the 440BX (Pentium II+) of boards, this has an AGP (Accelerated Graphics Port) connector for the first video slot. I booted up with a new 32MB AGP card without any problems. It should be noted that you should NOT purchase a cheap board or computer that has the video on-board. Spending the extra money for a self-supporting video card will save you a LOT of headaches in the future… trust me!
ADD-ON CARDS: This board has 7 (SEVEN) additional expansion slots: 5 PCIs and 2 ISAs. One of the slots is a PCI/ISA shared, so it should be noted that only six possible devices are allowed. This is more than enough for the average person using, at most a: modem, network card, sound card, SCII card, and TV card. Those five would fill up the PCI slots and the ISAs will probably never be used, but some people have an older modem or sound card making it necessary to include ‘in case’. There are a few boards that have six PCI slots and NO ISA slots, but those are more costly. The 5/1 combo is the standard.
ON-BOARD SOUND: The VA6 has a sound ‘card’ built into the board. Considering I was purchasing USB speakers this extra feature was perfect. I was able to set up the computer to use the onboard sound for the microphone / headset for Internet calling and the USB speakers / subwoofer for everything else. However, I was quite surprised that the quality of the on-board sound was extraordinary – so you can save the price of a sound card when you purchase this board. Furthermore, if necessary, the sound can be disabled in the bios is you would like.
SOFT BIOS: Since 1998, Abit has been the forerunner in easy-to-use BIOS. This board is no exception… all of the motherboard’s jumper settings can be controlled by the BIOS software – making all changes easy as pie.
EXTRA USB: The VA6 has a nice feature that is becoming standard on the newest boards: A second on-board USB hub. With the purchase of an additional $10.00 generic expansion card, two additional USB plugs can be installed into a computer with this board. However, this would occupy one of the expansion slots essentially making it useless – so I recommend using the ISA space if you ever opt for this feature.
UNFORTUNATELY, THERE WAS THERE IS ONE PROBLEM I HAD WITH THIS BOARD The Pentium II/III retention kit that came included with the board did NOT match with the Pentium III chip that I purchased. (I purchased a Retail-Boxed Pentium III 600B –133FSB-512KB). So, right now the computer is constructed and running perfectly, but the CPU is NOT snapped into the retention bracket – so I recommended to my father NOT to shake the computer around <grin>.
However, even for future replacement this presents a problem. To remove the current retention brackets and install a new one I would have to completely dismantle the computer and remove the board from the case. This is because the plastic pins have to be depressed from underneath the board to pop off the brackets. This is very disappointing, especially since I had a similar problem with the BE6 earlier this year – but not to this extreme. I doubt I will EVER replace the brackets, it would just be too much bother.
It would be a good idea to speak to the place you are purchasing the CPU from and pay the extra few dollars for an exact-matching retention kit so you do not fall into this problem. So far, the only CPU that I did NOT have this problem with is an OEM CPU – both retail models that I’ve purchased did not fit right.
CONCLUSIONS
There are a lot of smaller, standard features that I did not discuss in my futile attempt to keep this review under 1,000 words. <grin> If you would like to know the exact specifications of this motherboard I recommend you visit the Abit site – as they always keep their website current and NEVER eradicate discontinued items from their site. Also, I went into further details in my previous two motherboard reviews, mentioned earlier.
With the exception of the slight retention bracket problems this board was mounted, plugged in, connected to, and booted up without any incidents at all. I mounted it on to an In-Win ATX mid tower case with baffling simplicity – using 6 mounting screws included with the case. If you are building a home computer system (or even a low-end server), then this board is the perfect choice. It has all the expandability that an average person would EVER need, and the price id downright reasonable.
I’ll conclude that this is the THIRD Abit board that I have purchased in the last 18 months, and I have no doubt that the fourth will also be an Abit. This computer expert gives the Abit Corporation two enthusiastic thumbs up!
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 69.00
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shauncool
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Member: Shaun Smith
Location: USA
Reviews written: 121
Trusted by: 236 members
About Me:
Website Applications Developer concentrating on Database Design & Integration into websites based on ASP Technology.
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