Who said you can't get an Alpha to fit? :-)
The Asus K7M continues Asus's tradition of making stable high
quality motherboards. It's by far the best Athlon overclockable motherboard on
the market. The K7M comes in two models, one with on board sound and one
without. Normally I hate on board sound because the manufacturer puts in some
cheap Sound Blaster 16 chip. However the Yamaha XG chip that the K7M comes with
sounded damn sweet! It was every bit as good as the sound produced by the
Diamond Monster Sound MX300. The only thing missing from the XG is A3D so if you
want true 3D sound, you'll still have to get an A3D card.
This motherboard comes with all the features one can ask for. A ton of FSB
settings, ATA/66 support, 5 PCI slots, support for up to 768 Megs of RAM, XG
sound and super stable at overclocked speeds.
My biggest complaint with the K7M is the
position of the power connector. I'm still wondering why they chose that
location? I was able to fit an Alpha P3125 to the Athlon and install it into the
K7M so it cleared the power connector but the mods of pretty scary to attempt.
It requires you to strip your Athlon to bare PCB and then tap the Alpha P3125 to
make new mounts. Go
here
to find out how it's done.
I am concerned about Asus's support for the
K7M. For some reason this motherboard is not listed on the Asus website. If you
visit the
Asus Motherboard page, you'll see all the Intel motherboards listed but not
the K7M. I had to use the site search engine to find it. Maybe someone at Asus
can shine a light on this?
At $179, the Asus K7M is not cheap but you do
get a lot of features for the price, including the best on board audio I've ever
heard. If you don't need the built in sound, you can get the K7M for as low as
$149. If you have an Athlon and want to overclock without the use of a gold
finger device, the Asus K7M is the only way to go.
The Goods
The Bads
Rating
8/10
[Page 1]
[Page 2]
[Page 3]
[Page 4]
[Page 5] [Home]
