Let’s now enumerate the disadvantages of the OTES, especially since there are quite a few of them. First, the fan adds to the overall noise from the system case. The fan is not loud, but I can’t call it noiseless either. Second, the pipe of the OTES system makes it impossible to install coolers that expand to the top, like the ones from Zalman. The last and most frustrating disadvantage of the OTES is that the back panel of the mainboard carries fewer ports, since the OTES fan sits there. All legacy ports have been removed: parallel and serial ones. Of course, there are no new peripherals for these ports, but older equipment still works somewhere. That’s why it is a disappointing thing that ABIT KV8-MAX3 has no COM and LPT ports at all: there are even no onboard connectors for them on the PCB.

The placement of the components on the PCB is quite original, too. For example, the North Bridge of the chipset sits behind the processor socket rather than next to it. This solution is good, though, as it helped to move apart the PCI slots from the AGP and your AGP graphics card with its massive cooling system won’t block the next PCI slot. On the other hand, the graphics card will block the left latches of the DIMM slots: the AGP is too close to the DIMM slots.

The chipset North Bridge features active cooling, although many mainboards on VIA K8T800 come without that. Moreover, the fan on our mainboard was annoying enough, producing an unpleasant screechy sound. Overall, ABIT KV8-MAX3 mainboard comes with two fans. If it were not for the special noise-reduction technologies, KV8-MAX3 would be the loudest mainboard for the Athlon 64 processor.

Various connectors are scattered in no particular order on the PCB. Sometimes, it’s not quite easy to use them. For example, the ATX power supply connectors (standard and additional 12V one) are behind the processor socket and the power cables would go over the CPU cooler, preventing proper cooling. The FDD connector is moved to the left edge of the PCB, so the FDD cable goes through the entire system case. The SerialATA connectors that refer to the South Bridge of the chipset and the onboard USB connectors have been placed in front of the PCI slots, so that you will get a mess of cables there. All in all, the PCB design of ABIT KV8-MAX3 is original, but not very easy-to-use.

BIOS and Overclocking

ABIT always positions its mainboards as excellent platforms for CPU overclocking. The new KV8-MAX3 is no exception. Moreover, ìGuru technology from ABIT implemented into this product makes it the more appropriate for overclocking experiments.

Let’s now see what overclocking options we have in the BIOS Setup of the ABIT KV8-MAX3. The company uses BIOSes from Award and modifies them greatly. When you enter the Setup program, you notice the Softmenu Setup section where all CPU-related (i.e. overclocking-related) options are listed.