The board’s design is generally good. But I have to say here, that I judge it by how it matches my Chieftec DA-01 PC case as I have no other cases to play with. This case is certainly not for uATX boards, so my discussion of PCB design highs and lows will be very subjective. But it’s impossible to cover all types of PC cases including those which are designed for uATX boards, because of some of them may be pretty far from being standard.

The connectors are located pretty conveniently except CD-IN and S/PDIF. The CD-IN is placed close to the back PCB edge while the CD-ROM drive is usually in the front. Secondly, it can be uneasy to reach this connector when AGP video card is installed. On the other hand, the board has integrated video, and an external solution may be unnecessary. Also, an analog CD cable is not used that often. The S/PDIF is also placed in the back, and is tucked between the PCI slots, that is why it can be a problem to reach it. Also, if you try to connect S/PDIF to something located in the front, the cable will stretch along the whole PC case. But these are minor drawbacks.

Another small difficulty may arise if you try to install a “long” AGP card (like GeForce4 Ti4600): it will lock the memory modules, as the DIMM slots clips will be impossible to open. However, it was a problem only with GeForce4 Ti based cards, and with RADEON 9700 Pro or GeForce4 MX440 there were absolutely no problems. After all, not every one will need external graphics.

There are no more problems with the PCB layout. But the above mentioned ones are not that serious either. Also remember that the uATX format doesn’t give the designers too much freedom. Keeping all these facts in mind we can call the design of Albatron KM18G Pro a success.

The Albatron board possesses a dual-channel CPU power supply system. It means that it won’t be of any interest for overclockers. One more piece of evidence is the absence of four holes around the processor socket for massive coolers mounting. Nonetheless, AMD recommended coolers can easily be installed on it, and the lack of overclocking friendly options is not a weak point for a product of such class. The board features anti-burn protection for Athlon XP CPUs. The temperature is monitored with the internal CPU diode. The BIOS, however, doesn’t have any settings for this function, and I sincerely hope that this function works indeed and that the guys at Albatron made correct settings for the temperature. Actually, I have no grounds to doubt it.