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Introduction:
MSI
is not a stranger when it comes to the Socket
A market. They had very good success with their
K7T Pro2/A motherboards. MSI Socket A boards have
consistently been on top when it comes to stability
and their performance is not bad at all. MSI is
mostly targetting their products to the server
market wherein stability matters most over performance.
After
the great results of their KT133 boards, MSI now
releases their own KT133A board called K7T Turbo.
Like others, there is a RAID version of the board
which is aptly named K7T Turbo-R. What's very
impressive about MSI is that they always took
stability a level higher than most makers. They
also use very great and clean layouts on their
motherboards and ensure that the board is very
well rounded. MSI followed most standars by including
the AC97 onboard audio along with the board. While
it may seem like a drawback, it is fine since
it can always be disabled and replaced with PCI
sound card. The drawback however is that the traditional
onboard sound used CPU cycles and therefore, slows
down the system entirely, but that won't really
matter when these systems are built for office
work only. I still suggest you disabling them
and using a PCI sound card.
For
more information on the KT133A, please refer to
the Epox 8KTA3
Review.
MSI
K7T Turbo
What
you see above is the MSI K7T Turbo-R taken from
the MSI web site. Let's take a closer look at
the board that was sent to be reviewed.
The
motherboard itself has an average size for the
layout. MSI went with the 1/6/0/1 AGP/PCI/ISA/CNR
expansion configuration. Why did MSI choose to
go with the CNR instead of the ISA slot that we
see in other KT133A boards? Well perhaps MSI is
also targetting the board for OEM systems but
we've yet to see devices that will use the CNR
slot. 3 DIMM slots are standard since the KT133A
chipset is only limited to 1.5GB of memory and
only 6 banks. KT133A boards were made to run at
high bus speeds but MSI only went with a passive
heatsink to cool the northbridge. Notice also
the northbridge rotated 45 degrees. This shortens
the length of the traces from the northbridge
to the CPU socket thus providing cleaner and faster
signals. If you look at the board closer, you'll
see the AGP retention mechanism. It seems to be
a bit harder to use since it takes some force
to be bent before you can insert the AGP card.
The
MSI K7T Turbo includes a diagnostic feature called
D-LED which is a set of 4 LED's that light up
when the board is powered on and displays a combination
of red and/or green lights. There are many combinations
and each combination will display a particular
error or activity. 4 green lights means that they
system is already running while even a single
red light will signify an error or an activity.
It's not really easy to memorize all combinations
but this feature is good for cases that have a
window wherein you can peek inside the computer.
Funky lights!
Notice
the traces for additional IDE connectors
as well as traces for the RAID controller.
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Notice
the 6 beefy 4700uF capacitors around the
socket, and the power connector.
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The
board sent to be reviewed was the non-RAID version
but you'll see the traces for the additional IDE
connectors. The RAID version uses the Promise
ATA100/RAID controller which supports RAID 0/1
only. The RAID ports location may seem odd since
it would pose a problem installing full-length
PCI cards. MSI is the only company I know that
uses 4700uF capacitors. MSI didn't go with a 3-phase
power solution but opted to use a double-filtered
2-phase power solution. The power connector is
in an ideal placement since it will not go over
the CPU socket's fan.
MSI's
layout is very clean and the board still stays
relatively small. It won't post much problems
fitting in most cases and it can handle those
large coolers just fine. The only bad thing I
can see about the layout is the placement of the
additional IDE connectors, other than that...the
layout is excellent.
What
about the bios? |
