The Fast and the Furious (Abit KT7-RAID)

Member Name: johnlaw80

Product:	Abit KT7-RAID
Date:	23/11/01 (161 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: RAID, Cheap, Layout

Disadvantages: Does not support the 'C' class Athlons running 266Mhz FSB

I read alot of reviews before I went out and bought this board. Most of them were good, and I have to say I agree with them. When I bought the board, I got an AMD 1.2Ghz running on a 100Mhz bus. I also needed a new power supply. The first thing to make sure is that you buy a PSU that IS AMD recommended. Because I didnt! I blew four processors before I decided to change the PSU. I even changed the board after the 2nd CPU blew and it still blew the 3rd CPU! Imagine my anger. So anyway after purchasing a decent PSU, I have installed the board and the CPU and everything is fine. I had to reinstall Windows 2000 because it is very hardware specific when it installs and would not even boot up with the new board in. Not too much trouble there.

So whats the board like? It is very well laid out, with the IDE ports close to where my drives are so I don't have short cable syndrome.

The CPU has to fan connectors close to it so you can have two fans running at the same time, just in case one breaks down. If you are only running one and it breaks, you can set the bios to automatically turn your computer off so you don't damage the CPU. There are three more fan connectors on the board so you can have a mega cold system, that sounds lkike a hoover. This would seriously benefit the over clockers so they don't burn their CPU.

I have found this board to be extremly stable under Windows 2000, and the power management functions are useful in the fact that I don't have to turn the computer off any more. I can just put it into hibernate mode, where it saves everything to disk. When you switch on again, it loadds into Windows a lot quicker than a clean reboot.

Overall a very good board.

Summary: