My new main motherboard
Written: Sep 03 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Easy to set up and install
Cons: None
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| kurt_h's Full Review: Abit Slot A KA7-100 Motherboard |
After my travails with the Asus K7V I was searching around for a good Athlon based motherboard that just might actually work with my hardware out of the box. So I scoured the usual review sites and found the Abit KA7-100 to be ranked second to the Asus motherboard. So a quick check at pricewatch.com and I soon had it delivered to me for yet another try to get my main system up and running.
Out of the box this board is very easy to set up with very few jumpers at all to be seen. Installation of the CPU and memory is quite easy and easing it into my SC-750A case left plenty of room for all of the connectors. I added an Asus6800 Deluxe graphics card, SoundBlaster card, SCSI card, NIC and keyboard and trackball. The first boot-up was smooth and there wasn't much that needed configuration except for processor speed and memory speed.
From there I had a hassle free installation of Windows2000Professional and brought the system up on my network. Downloaded all necessary drivers that didn't come with the motherboard, rebooted and it has been steady operation from there. I haven't run my memory at its full rated 133 MHz speed as I wanted to give the system a decent burn-in and sometime this week I'll do that and if there is no update on this article that means that all has gone well.
Normally I'm an Asus or SuperMicro fan for my systems, but this Abit board has been one of the easiest to install that I've run across. I don't have all of the necessary equipment to run this board at its fullest as I'm lacking an ATA/100 hard drive, but my ATA/66 drive is doing well enough and an older drive serves as excess storage on the other IDE channel with the CD-ROM drive. There is plenty of room for expansion on this motherboard as it is forward compatible with additional IDE channels for even more hard drive storage space. And as I have some room left in my case that shouldn't be a problem if I go down that path.
In all this board has ended my 3 months of upgrading my main system and will hopefully last out the next couple of years until it is time to go through this once again. I heartily recommend this board to anyone who is mixing older and newer equipment on their home PC project and it has enough performance enhancing equipment to allow for decent upgrade options over the next year or so.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
kurt_h
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Location: Sterling, VA
Reviews written: 967
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About Me:
A reader of SF and fantasy, and an enjoyer of liquid refreshment now and again.
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