X-bit labs

ABIT KV7 Mainboard on VIA KT600 Chipset Review (page 4)

Category: Mainboards

by Grigoriy Gubankov

[ 11/25/2003 | 11:19 PM ]

PCB Design

The first thing to strike you in this mainboard is its small dimensions. The small dimensions had a negative impact on the PCB design. The front of the PCB where the FDD connector is usually found is now occupied by memory voltage regulators. ABIT engineers had to move the connector down, right below the PCI slots, where other mainboards usually have onboard USB plugs.

So, the FDD cable should go through the entire system case, hindering proper airflow and provoking difficulties with expansion cards installation. I should admit, however, that it was simply impossible to put the FDD connector anywhere else on the PCB – the small dimensions impose their restrictions.

But what about those onboard USB connectors? They moved behind the PCI slots and very close to them.

As the snapshots show, the ABIT engineers tried to place the connectors aside from the center of the slot. Anyway, PCI cards installation will be difficult if the cables are attached to the onboard USB pins. Moreover, as there is a cable going to the back panel bracket between the PCI slots, installation is going to be even harder than that.

Still, you should keep in mind the following: ABIT never positioned this product for enthusiastic users, who usually have a lot of PCI devices in their systems. Considering the good level of integration of the ABIT KV7 (and its high quality sound!), the owner of the KV7 might get along without any PCI cards at all. In this case, you won’t bother about the USB cables. Mainstream users don’t often take the system case cover off to install or remove the PCI card, too. It means they won’t suffer from the improper placement of the onboard USB connectors much and often. However, this is clearly a drawback in the PCB design from the professional point of view.

The IDE connectors don’t follow the standard, either. They are parallel to the mainboard surface.

This is a forced solution. Try to extend the line going along the AGP slot farther: it will cross the IDE connector. Thus, if it were located the same way as in most mainboards, the attached IDE cable would make it impossible to install a long AGP graphics card like a GeForce4 Ti4600 or GeForce FX 5900. That would be really bad. So, ABIT had to “rotate” the connectors in order to avoid this sort of problems. This unusual placement of the IDE connectors doesn’t bring any inconveniences, rather otherwise.

The rest of the components are all in their proper places, maybe save for the additional 12V power connector. It is at the very top of the PCB. The corresponding cable from the PSU is usually long, so the cable may form several loops near the CPU cooler. This loop cannot of course bring any distortion into the airflow, but can get chewed into the fan blades. Just be careful about the assembly process and this will never happen to you.