Abit KV Via Socket 754 MicroATX motherboard with AMD Athlon 3000+ and 512MB DDR400
For those of you who are looking to put together a system based on the microATX case size, this board is likely to prick your interest with it’s wide array of features. This ASUS motherboard tackles the issue of people building microATX computer systems not being able to put a lot of power into them.
Note: microATX is not the “cube style” computer, but rather a much smaller version of the ATX case with limited drive bays.
The main difference between this microATX size motherboard and a traditional ATX motherboard, which is the most common, is the sizing. The microATX simply reduces the number of PCI slots for expansion, allowing the board to be less tall when looked at vertically.
The motherboard uses the socket 754 design, allowing it to take AMD Athlon 64 (included) as well as AMD K8 and AMD Sempron chips. The bus speed goes up to 400MHz, which is the usual high speed for the front side bus at this time.
There are two slots for memory. One of those will be taken up by the 512MB DDR400/PC3200 that comes with this package. I would personally recommend that you get another one along with this package. If you are going to build a system of this power, I would suggest 1GB of RAM to make it run very well.
There is support for an AGP 8x card if you want to expand graphics capabilities. But I would try out the onboard video chipset first. With this kind of specification from a board I think this would provide enough power for users just using big monitors or higher resolutions, but if you’re a gamer, go for an extra card.
There is support for ATA/133 hard drives as well as the new SATA. LAN support includes support for Gigabyte LAN. There are 8 USB ports, built in audio, 3 fan connectors to keep things cool in it’s little box.
The processor is an AMD Athlon 64 which can be overclocked with this board up to about 2.6GHz which amounts to a 3700+. These processors provide exceptionally fast access to memory because the controller that accesses memory is built right into the chip, speeding things up noticeably.
The included memory is 512MB of Ultra DDR400/PC3200. I recommend going for an extra one to up the memory to 1GB.
If you are planning to put together a microATX computer system this motherboard, processor and memory will certainly be a great place to start. With a good combination of features and power this is a combination that won’t disappoint.