|
MSI K7N420 Pro (MS-6373)
Like some of their recent motherboards, the comes in fire engine red. If you have a nice case window, this will look damn hot! The motherboard is a standard ATX one, and not abnormally big, so it should fit into most good sized ATX cases.
Let's take a tour...
 
The MSI K7N420 Pro is a Socket-A motherboard, in case you didn't figure that out yet, and supports Athlon CPUs, from the lower speed Durons (from 950mhz), and the more current Athlon XPs (up to 1800+). Although I am unable to test for faster CPUs, my XP 1800+ worked without any problems. Unlike Asus, MSI reads your CPU temp off the standard thermal probe, thus not supporting the Athlon XP internal diode. The area around he socket is relatively free, and includes the 4 mounting holes for those of you with heatsinks that require it. I placed the Swiftech MCX462 for sizing, and it fit fine. The ATX power connection is well out of the way, but may or may not interfere with the heatsink depending on how well you route it.
 
The above left picture are the sound input plugs for various components such as your modem and CD. There are 5 PCI slots, which should be more than enough for you considering that you may not have any need for 2 of them (sound and LAN). A nice addition to the AGP slot is the clip included to secure the card. It's not an essential addition, but if you tend to wiggle your VGA cable on and off the video card often, this will help keep it steady.
Nothing special here, just your usual I/O stuff here. We have the standard PS/2 ports, and USB ports. There is only one serial port here, which I don't think is a big deal since the interface isn't widely used much, unless you're still using an external communications device or older PDA. Sound and game ports are logically grouped together, but I find the area around the VGA connection (if you choose to use the integrated video) fairly tight. Score points for the motherboard of removing the clutter from the lower back area of your case (and moved to the top :P).
3 Dimm slots are standard fare here, but good luck using them all. First reported by gamepc.com, it's been reported that slot number 2 (the middle one) cannot be filled with a dual bank Dimm, without a performance drop. This is nVidia's SuperStability mode. You can read more about it from their , but I decided to give it a quick test myself, using two Kingston Dimms and one Crucial, and the performance drop is real. It does work, but the performance loss will be up to you to decide if it's worth it. If you only have two Dimms, simply use slot 1 and 3.
We got the usual IDE connections here, supporting ATA100. ATA133 is supported by the nForce, but the only motherboards supporting that speed, are those that specifically requested them from nVidia. At this time, AFAIK, there are no native ATA133 nForce motherboards.
Previous Page - Introduction
Next Page - BIOS and Overclocking
|
