Great Board!
Written: Sep 27 '00 (Updated Nov 20 '00)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Lots of cool options, GREAT expandability, Fast, reliable. Its an ASUS!
Cons: It is already discontinued...The A7V is better
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| GI_Joe's Full Review: Asus K7V |
I bought the K7V because it was time to upgrade my previous hardware. I previously had a Soltek motherboard, and had maxed the CPU with the AMD K6-2 550Mhz. My PC was starting to act up, I believe due to the fact Windows was nearing 8months, in which time it almost always starts getting flaky, prompting me to format/reinstall. Anyway, I was at this point. I loved my previous mobo/CPU, but since the eventual upgrade I was planning on getting would make me need to format/reinstall, I just decided to go ahead and get my new parts early and do it all at once.
I went straight to Asus without looking at any other brands. I thought I should get the best this time. I build PCs for a living and always just get the average mobo that fits my needs at the time, or I get the old parts from customers... but this time I wanted a brand new one.
I chose the K7V, because it supported the chip of choice (Athalon, duh). This was one of the few models available from Asus, so I went with this one. This is the second mobo from the best at this time. The top Athalon model is for the Thunderbird, which I didn’t have the $$ to purchase at the time, plus I was told the Thunderbird would probably have to have PC133 ram, which I didn’t have the $$ to buy either, I just wanted to use my old PC100 ram. I was told by my local wholesale parts vendor that the K7V and Athalon MIGHT work with PC100 ram, but then again might now. I decided to give it a shot..
I ended up ordering the K7V, the Athalon 650 (for starters, best bang for the buck.. the mobo will take 1100Mhz though) and a new case with a 300W power supply (which they said the Athalon requires, since it pulls a lot of power). I spent $300 (wholesale) on it all. Not a bad deal.
I finally got my parts after they took a week ordering my CPU. I rushed home and slapped it all together and stripped my old PC clean, and added all the parts to the new one.
First impression: It didn’t work :(
I fooled around with the manual and jumpers for about 30mins, realizing I needed to change the bus speed to 100Mhz, since I had PC100 ram in it. I flipped the switch and it all came to life. What a relief. Now to see if the PC100 ram was stable with the Athalon. I would test by installing Windows.
I chose Windows ME (might as well see how well it does, I HATE Win98, and love Win95, but Win95 was becoming less and less compatible with my newer and newer hardware). Installation was a breeze, it was lightning fast, it only took about 30-40mins to completely install windows and install all the correct drivers. Boom. Done.
Win ME found EVERYTHING in my PC, including all the motherboard resources! Pretty cool.
Anyhow, a month has gone by now and I have to say I am very impressed with this motherboard. It is an ATX mobo, so it had all the ports jumbled together on the back panel. It included 2 USB ports, AND (this is cool) had a port on the motherboard to 2 additional USB ports, and it even had the 2 extra port connector included! so I have 4 USB ports (not that I even use any of them, but cool anyway) I am loving the built in ATA66 IDE controller. I only have ATA33 drives, but it’s a big step up in speed from my old mobo's controller. The bios options are ok, though I have seen much better. It was easily configurable. It included an onboard sound card with jacks built on the back, which I disabled for use with my old sound card.
One very cool feature of Asus boards is the fact that they even TELL you HOW to over clock the CPU. Almost EVERYONE discourages this, but Asus has notes right there in the manual on how to do it. How cool is that?
I think my next mobo will also be an Asus, though unless the 1100Mhz Athalon becomes obsolete, it looks like ill be keeping this mobo longer than the average 1 year for me. Might even stretch it out 2 years. Who knows? The price was right too, only $139. Not bad...
You really can’t rate a motherboard's performance without its ram and CPU installed, so there is not much I can rate, except for the options it comes with. As for speed, this thing screams. Diablo 2 I WAY faster, renders the 3D video better and has no problem handling the environmental surround sound and other effects (haven’t tested Quake or anything yet, I’m hooked on D2 currently). My apps (MS Office, Photoshop 5.5, +more) open much faster, render grafx faster, and save faster (due to the ATA66, and faster cache.) I'm a happy camper. This is the best one I have bought to date (I’ve gone through like 10+ computers in the past 11 years, not counting upgrades to components to each of those)
Here is my current setup:
*Asus K7V mobo
*Athalon 650Mhz (I added 4 fans to this baby, I need to get the over clocker add-on card so I can over clock it to an 800+ MHz!)
*128MB PC100 DIMM
*8GB ATA33 HDD(all Seagate drives)
*8GB ATA33 HDD
*10GB ATA33 HDD
*4GB HDD
(I have another ATA66 card I might put in for a total of 8 IDE drives, but then I need to install a second power supply, which there is room in the case for)
*a no-brand SCSI card (haven’t put my Adaptec or DPT card in yet)
*4x8x SCSI CDR
*12X SCSI CDROM
*SoundBlaster Live! Digital
*Diamond Viper V770 32MB AGP video (this mobo has a 4x AGP pro slot)
*Mid-Tower case with 300W PS (added 2 additional fans to the case, will increase this soon. The mobo has a utility for windows that will give you all the power stats and temp stats for the mobo and CPU, better cooling, better performance)
*3Com 10/100 PCI FastEtherlink NIC (for my network, there is a cable modem attached to the network)
I probably have some more stuff I can’t think of at the moment (I’m writing from work). But this mobo has GREAT expandability options for future upgrades, so I would recommend this to others, as well as sell it to my customers.
***** Update! 11-2-00 *****
TO anyone looking at this motherboard, while it totally rocks, I feel as though I have made a mistake in buying it. I think i should have purchased this model, but in the Thunderbird flavor (the Asus A7V). This appears to be the way the market is going, back to socket chips, and away from the card based chips, as the PII and Athalons are built.The same opinion goes for the other motherboard model (my friend has one) and i would reccomend that one instead, just because the CPUs are cheaper for it and it accepts not only the super cheap Duron (which kicks the Celeron's butt) and will also accept the Thunderbird chips clocked at 1200MHz and higher (as they come out). This way you can buy one of these excellent motherboards and spend as little as $50 for a 600MHz Duron CPU, and then as you get the money, and as the faster chips become available, you can just drop a 1200MHz+ Thunderbird in it.
Cheers!
***** Update! 11-18-00 *****
I just swapped my PC100 128MB DIMM out for PC133 128MB and 64MB DIMMs... Ive got 196MB running in it now. Runs great! i didnt have to reset any clock speeds or change any jumpers or settings since i was putting different speed ram in.
***** Update! 11-20-00 *****
I tried ordering one of these boards the other day and found out alot of dealers/distro's are discontinuing them already, that the Asus A7V is one to get instead. Just thought you all would want to know. :(
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 139
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Epinions.com ID:
GI_Joe
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Member: G.I.Joe
Location: O-Town, FL
Reviews written: 10
Trusted by: 1 member
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