Good Motherboard, Pricey Though
Written: Dec 23 '04
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Lots of features, 4 IDE channels, stable, excellent overclocking options.
Cons: Expensive, DDR400 support sketchy.
The Bottom Line: Like a lot of formerly-top-of-the-line equipment, kind of overpriced now, but an excellent investment.
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| dvpierce's Full Review: Soyo SY-KT400 DRAGON Ultra Motherboard |
This motherboard has a boatload of features, many of which are in addition to those already supported by the VIA southbridge - supposedly, there's even SATA support, though I've never tried it. I bought it two years ago because I was angry at my dead motherboard and decided I wanted the most ridiculously fully featured and expensive motherboard I could justify purchasing, with the logic that if it was good enough for a hard-core overclocker, it would be plenty good enough for me.
I'm glad I did it.
At the time it had been out for about three months and I paid $130 for this board - it's now going for a good bit less, of course. At the time, it was a bit less expensive than nForce2 motherboards, and a lot less expensive than the nForce2 boards that had the same feature set, so I figured I could deal with the less efficient memory controller of the KT400.
Over the last two years, this board has been run basically 24/7. I've only noticed a few caveats, and only one is really bad.
So, on that note, bad news first:
1) The RAID controller sometimes seems a bit finicky. I've had some read/write errors with a couple different drives that were either the fault of bad cabling or a IDE Controller brain-fart. With new cables, everything has been fine, so far.
2) Single channel memory is slower than dual channel.
3) The really bad - there is nothing '400' about the KT400. FSB runs fine between 100 and 175 MHz, and memory clock is fine between 100 and 175 MHz. However, if you set the memory clock to 200 Mhz, (DDR400) anything faster than the CMOS-default timings causes the computer to slow down hideously and/or crash. This is a big problem for me in particular because my latest memory's SPD chip has it set to DDR400 CL2 2-2-2. (Long live BH5!) I had no idea what the heck was going on untill I set the memory to DDR333 and the problems disappeared. I guess I wasted some money on memory, but everything is fine at max timings and 175 MHz. Maybe they should have called it the KT350? :-p
4) It keeps shorting against my case. I put some wax paper in. It insulated just fine, but it's wierd. It's probably as much my case's fault as anything else, though.
5) Slightly confusing AGP Information. There was a sticker on the board that said something to the effect of "don't use 3.3v AGP cards" but there was absolutely no information, on the board or in the manual, on how to tell the difference between a 3.3v and a 1.5v AGP card. I had to find out on the internet that, usually, 3.3v cards have one notch in the AGP connector, while 1.5v cards typically have two.
On the other hand, there's plenty of good about this motherboard. It has mounting holes for the biggish heat sinks that require them, like the old Alpha PAL8025 or the Swiftech MCX462. Some newer heat sinks seem to have abandoned such mounting anachronisms, but for those of us who have already invested, it's a nice touch. So is the power conector for AGP Pro cards.
It's stable as a rock, with the aforementioned DDR400 caveat. I reboot every month whether I need it or not. :-)
Overclocking is a breeze - everything is in the BIOS, easily accessible. The CMOS reset jumper even has a handy tab on it to make it easier to grab. Like most of the motherboards I've seen, the manuals really don't have much to say about what settings do what and what they mean, but if you know what you're doing, it's like being a kid in a candy store. vCore goes 1.4-1.85v, DDR is 2.5-2.8v, AGP goes 1.6-1.8v and there are more memory timing adjustments than one could justifiably need. That info is, of course, subject to change with different BIOS revisions.
The onboard RAID controller is very handy, though I've never used it for RAID. Instead, I plugged single HDs into it. I have four. You can have up to 8 IDE devices attached directly to the mainboard, and up to four of them can be optical drives (the two additional 'RAID' ATA channels don't support ATAPI, but you can boot from them.)
This board is black. If such things matter to you, that might be a selling point, or not. There's a silver-ish ("platinum") version as well.
The accessories package is nice, there's some good bundled software (Norton Antivirus and Ghost, plus some other stuff.) The motherboard includes some minimal but accurate temperature and voltage monitoring software, as well, which is kind of handy, since some of the programs I've used have produced some really strange voltage readings (like 7v on my 12v rail, 6v where there should be 5v, and so forth.) There's also a fairly standard suite of software for the RAID controller.
All in all, I'm incredibly pleased with this board. It's given me a couple solid years of reliable service, forgiven a few ill advised newbie overclocking adventures, and just generally kept on ticking. Given the range of options available today, I wouldn't recommend buying it new right now, but I'll definitely be a repeat Soyo customer.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 130
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Epinions.com ID:
dvpierce
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Reviews written: 7
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