Review of the Albatron KM18G Pro - A Propperly Decorated Board?
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The Board
As mentioned in the specifications,the KM18G Pro has a 4x/8x AGP slot and three 32 bit PCI slots. I reallyliked the AGP card retention mechanism used on this motherboard.Albatron's designers realized that a large number of people interestedin the KM18G Pro would be putting it in a LAN machine, so they wentahead and beefed up the clip to make sure that the sweet $500 video cardinstalled doesn't come loose in transit and smash itself all over the inside of the case.
Next is the north and south bridges of the nForce2chipset. They put a pretty nice looking chipset cooler on there, foraestheticsmore than anything else. I'll be covering that a bit more later.
The pictures below show the 3 DIMM slots and the IDE connectors.Everything is on the board as it should be; there aren't anyobstructions, and the positioning makes cable routing easier. To usedual channel, two of the same type of memory need to be used: one stickof memory in either DIMM 1 or DIMM 2, and the second stick of memoryinstalled in DIMM 3.
The CPU socket has plenty of room around it, making it perfect forwhatever type of heatsink is preffered. Unfortunately, however, itdoesn't have the 4 mounting holes around it for large heatsinks, likewhat Alpha and Swiftech manufacture. Pretty disappointing. I wouldprefer to use a large heatsink like the Swiftech MCX462+ with a quietfan, but that is not an option with the KM18G Pro.
The back plate connectors are shown below. Shown are the PS/2, USB,LAN, parallel port, COM port, VGA plug, game port, and soundconnections. Luckily, even though Albatron choose not to include a backplate cover, all the connections are in their mostly standardlocations, so using an old back plate cover that might be lying aroundisn't out of the question if your case doesn't already have a similarlyconfigured back plate.
This next photo really shows the advantages of using a micro-ATXmotherboard. The motherboard below it is a full sized ATX motherboard(shown for comparison).
Next: Checking Out the BIOS >>
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