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Review: ABIT AN8 Fatal1ty S939 Motherboard

by Tarinder Sandhu on 24 May 2005, 00:00

Tags: abit

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Layout and features



ABIT's Fatal1ty (named and endorsed by master gamer Jonathan 'Fatal1ty' Wendel) line of boards share a common look that favours menacing, business-like colours. Unlike the companion LGA775 AAXE Fatal1ty's layout, the Athlon 64 edition doesn't have a wraparound OTES cooling system. That, though, has more to do with the larger S939 socket than any skimping on ABIT's part. It makes implicit sense for ABIT to run with NVIDIA's single-chipset nForce4 Ultra here, as space, with all the features and cooling, is at a premium.



The OTES system is designed to keep the power-delivery portion of the AN8 as cool as possible. It's accomplished by mounting a couple of heatsinks on the hot-running MOSFETs and then using a couple of 40mm fans, also housed in the plastic shell, to exhaust the warm air out of the back. No great shakes when running at the default 200MHz 'FSB', though cooling will help when the AN8's run in overclocked form, which is exactly what it's all about. In view of the fact that this is a cut-down version of OTES cooling, ABIT has located its excellent µGuru monitoring chip right next to the CPU's socket. A single fan header is sandwiched between OTES and board component. It makes it unneedlessly difficult to plug a fan in.



The main 24-pin power connector's located in a decent place, and there's another fan header close by. The DIMM slots, which support up to 4GB of regular DDR1 RAM, are colour-coded to indicate dual-channel operation. However, when using the supplied RAMFlow attachment and an FX-55 PIB cooler, one cannot position it over the black DIMM slots; the cooler simply gets in the way. Most users, though, will probably opt for a couple of DIMM modules. Thankfully, this time, fan headers are close enough not to have to stretch the RAMFlow's cable, unlike the Fatal1ty AA8XE's.



Looking further to the left and past the nForce4-powered SATA ports and rotated IDE ports, ABIT includes a couple of decent features. The first is simple; colour-coded motherboard-to-case pins that make it easy for you to hook everything up. The second is ABIT's debug LED display that's designed to aid troubleshooting if the AN8 doesn't boot correctly. Stopping at a specific code during the POST sequence that can be cross-checked against the manual, it's a thoughtful measure for the enthusiast that likes to tinker with a system. Moving on across, ABIT specs. a 2-port Texas Instruments FireWire (1394a) controller. It's difficult to ascertain why the 3-port version, as featured on the sister Fatal1ty board, has been eschewed in favour of this one.



3 PCI slots on a PCI-Express sound good on paper, yet, when running with either an X850 XT PE or GeForce 6800 Ultra, it's possible to block of at least one and almost two of them in one fell swoop. Sure, the cards use two-slot coolers, but ABIT locates the main x16 PCIe slot too close to the three PCI slots. There's a fine line between successfully juggling features with good PCB design; that line is broached here.

Note what looks like a backwards-facing PCI-Express x1 slot, right above SimpliPHY's routing of NVIDIA's Gigabit Ethernet. It's actually ABIT trying to free up some I/O and PCB space by adding in a non-integrated soundcard that carries nForce4 Ultra's AC'97 audio. It's a shame that a board designed primarily for the gamer/enthusiast in mind doesn't have decent on-board sound, but ABIT needs to balance out the need of inflating the package cost by including, say, something like VIA's Envy24 against most gamers' desire to purchase their own discrete PCI-based cards.



You can now see why there's need for a separate audio card. The OTES cooling system takes away much of the I/O section space, limiting it to 4 USB2.0, RJ45 (Gigabit Ethernet), a single FireWire 1394a port and PS/2. Incidentally, carrying on over from the Fatal1ty AA8XE is a number of board-mounted red LEDs. Tacky or great, you choose.