Great board, but not for the faint hearted
Written: Nov 27 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: super performance, expandability, extra powerful onboard power supply
Cons: quirky, doesn't work well with overclocker coolers
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| betatester100's Full Review: Abit KT7-RAID Motherboard |
First off, if you are a first timer, or newbie to building PC's, this motherboard is probably not for you. The BIOS alone will throw you for a loop. Sure, you could always set the optimal settings and hope for the best, but thats not what the KT7 is all about. Better yet, the chance of you getting it to work flawlessly the first time around is less than if you get an Asus A7V, Gigabyte GA-7ZX or EPOX 8KTA+ (or 8KTA2).
Now, if you're a brave soul and want to venture into true PC building and control, run, don't walk, and get a KT7 RAID, or standard KT7, if your needs don't include RAID or two extra IDE channels. Regardless of whether you go RAID or RAIDless its the same basic board.
ABIT includes 1 AGP, 6 PCI and one ISA (shared with a PCI). Abit is also kind enough to include an ATA66/100 cable and even two of them if you get the RAID version. Abit also includes a secondary USB header for a third and fourth USB device. And in paying attention to detail Abit is the first to use a 3 phase power supply which is touted as running cooler and being able to deliver more current for the highest speed processors today and those forthcoming. The last detail item is the fan Abit includes on top of the VIA Northbridge to help cool it better than a passive heatsink. A nice touch!! All in all a nice setup.
I do recommend anyone starting out with the board do so with only a video card, excellent CL2 133Mhz SDRAM (Crucial for example) and your processor speed of choice (and good heatsink with thermal compound, not thermal tape!!). Of course use an AMD approved power supply, or you'll be in for a whole lot more troubles than you could ever imagine. I personally like the Antec pp303x (300W), and Antec now has the pp403x (400W). The pp303x is a nice piece. I've viewed the waveforms of the PP303X on an oscilloscope and can tell you Antec's product is stable and well designed.
You'll also likely want to install Windows (98SE, ME or 2000) using the VIA controller and later move the disk to the Highpoint controller. This is only for simplicity of installation. You can use the Highpoint RAID controller to do the initial install, but you'll likely need to load the drivers before loading the OS. And, in some cases, like if you have an IOMEGA ATAPI ZIP you may have problems formatting a harddisk in Windows 2000 on the Highpoint controller. Somehow the ZIP interferes. Safest bet is to remove it during the initial install. Like I said do the install on the VIA controller then move the disk over to the Highpoint after the insital install. At that point, in Windows, load the Highpoint drivers.
One key point, whatever you do make sure you upgrade the BIOS to the latest UZ103B1 BIOS as available on ftp://ftp.abit.com.tw/pub/beta/kt7/. You'll want the BIOS and the matching 103B1 drivers for the highpoint controller. These new files fix various problems with stability, Highpoint controller compatibility issues, ACPI power management problems, as well as improves overall performance of the system. Its a must have and will reduce your level of aggravation. Just make sure your Highpoint ATA100 controller is enabled in BIOS before flashing to the new BIOS. The BIOS flash upgrades the BIOS and Highpoint BIOS. If the Highpoint is not enabled, the Highpoint upgrade will fail.
Now, that we're ready to go, make sure the first thing you do is enter the BIOS and start with the SOFT MENU by hard setting the CPU speed. Its imperative you do this, or the next time you boot, you'll be looking at a black screen indefinitely. If you accidentally see this, just move the jumper located adjacent to the battery to the other 2 pins for about 10 seconds, then replace it. This will clear the BIOS settings and give you another shot. THIS TIME DON'T FORGET TO ENTER THE BIOS AND HARD SET THE CPU FREQUENCY. Next, select Load Optimal settings from the main BIOS menu. Follow this by setting up the IDE devices in Standard CMOS features. Go one by one through the IDE channels and make sure any device you have installed are set to AUTO in the menu. For some reason ABIT defaults the secondary IDE to NONE. You'll be pulling your hair out wondering where your devices are. Now, you've got the answer. Its a good idea to go through the other settings to make sure they are setup appropriately for your use. Refer to the fairly well written manual for more information.
Once you've got Windows installed go ahead and add your cards one by one and let Windows find them. A sound card should be in PCI slot 4 for maximum reliability. Also, if you're using an AGP graphics card, do yourself a favor and don't use PCI slot 1. Unless you're using Windows 2000 PCI slot 1 and the AGP slot normally don't like each other.
If you run into lockup problems, random reboot problems and/or random stability issues or USB issues don't fret, these are relatively common occurances with this board and can be worked out completely with some time and effort. Visit http://www.apushardware.com/faqs/kt7faq/kt7faq.htm for more information on fixing these issues. I've found that by decreasing the CPU voltage and/or I/O voltage is a good solution to many instability problems. Also, in some cases increasing the frontside bus to 103MHz has helped. There are other remedies, so visit this site to learn more.
See, I told you this board is not for the faint hearted. Its a solid, excellent performing board, but does come with some luggage in the form of quirks!!
I highly recommend this to someone who is familiar with building PC's (not someone who once replaced a harddrive and now thinks he's an expert), or to someone who needs extra IDE channels and/or RAID functionality, or if you're like me and still have an old reliable 3COM ISA 56K modem that still works better than any PCI modem on the market today!
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
betatester100
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Location: Aventura, FL
Reviews written: 16
Trusted by: 8 members
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