My new toy
Written: Dec 25 '03
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Got it for 150$ (Can currency) which is great!
Cons: The board dosent come in blue.
The Bottom Line: If you have a socket A processor and need a new mobo, consider this one!
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| wild_card832's Full Review: Abit NF7-S Motherboard |
Where to begin. First off, a little bit about myself. Unlike most, I am just 17 years old. Sure I'm into computers but I dont miss out on the joys of being a teen.
I've been computer crazy ever since I totaled the family computer 5 years ago. I disasembled the whole thing and wasen't able to put it back together and get it to run again. Since then, I have read books and the internet and I have now built my own computer from scratch.
I live by trial and error. My last upgrade, I had PC133 and PC 100 RAM together and didnt know why my computer froze on boot-up. Now I know alot more.
Anyways, to the point of this review.
I live in Canada, and I dont believe in online shopping. So I bought the board at a local retailer. Even before buying it I had done tons of recherche to make sure I was putting money in the right place. Turns out with the NF7-S, I get more than what I paid for.
You can plug in almost any Duron, Athlon, Athlon XP processor meaning if you have an old Duron (like me) and want to later upgrade to an Athlon XP (like me) you wont have to buy a new board.
The CPU connector is well positioned giving you enough room to hookup alot of the high end heatsinks. Theres even metal stripes under the heatsink connectors to protect the mobo. The only slight fear is that the whole thing sits on the edge of the board. As well, hooking up your CPU fan could be tricky. You have to drag the plug across the board past the power connectors to hook up.
If your upgrading, you'll have to toss out that old SDRAM chip, this board is DDR only. But theses days, who cares. Here in Canada you can get 256 DDR333 for 50 bucks. The adds talk about dual channel (and to be honest I'm still not entirely sure what that is) but you can just get 1 chip of ram and plug it in. Dont need to worry your head off.
Well, what about this new SATA drive stuff you ask. Well, I asked the same question. You dont need to go out and buy a new SATA hard drive. There are still 2 IDE slots for your old hard drives.
8x AGP is nice, unfortunatly I cant use it. My video card is a GeForce 4 MX 64mb DDR w/TV out but it plugs into the PCI slots. As for the clip, I have heard that, in most cases its useless, but if your card has a big cooler or is heavy, the clip helps keep it in proprely.
As for the integrated sound, its not like in the old days. People used to say integrated was bad. Its not the best, but these days, integrated sound is far from cheap. And this mobo is surround sound. Something I have yet to test as I use my stereo instead of PC speakers.
Integrated LAN is also very nice. Here it saves me about 30$ to get a PCI LAN card.
The mobo comes with 2 USBs in the back panel AND with the ability to have an extra 4 for a total of 6 USBs.
Well, so far this concludes my review. This mobo is by far the best investment I've made for my computer. I dont think there will be anything like it for a while which means this mobo is in the business for the next couple of years.
Review made short:
PROS:
Uses almost any Socket A CPUs
Integrated surround sound
Affordable and will last you years
CONS:
Plugging your CPU fan is tricky
CPU socket on the edge of the mobo (personal preference mostly)
There ya have it.
Hope your minds are at ease now.
If you have comments, suggestions, opinions, please voice them to me at topgun832@hotmail.com
Enjoy!
Wild Card
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 150$ Can cur
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Epinions.com ID:
wild_card832
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Reviews written: 1
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