We are getting closer and closer to the 23^rd of September and massive AMD Athlon 64 availability and continue our brief exploration of mainboards for AMD 64-bit desktop microprocessors. AOpen, the company known for its mainboards with vacuum tubes for better audio quality – started to advertise its Socket 754 mainboards in Japan during the weekend.

What is very interesting about AOpen mainboards is that one of them – the MK-89L – uses the micro-ATX form-factor. This is the first mainboard for AMD Athlon 64 microprocessors described here that is intended for relatively small cases, not huge Full-ATX mainboards.

All mainboards designed for the 64-bit Athlon CPUs boast a number of features typically found on advanced mainboards. This is not a big surprise since the Athlon 64 chips this year will, in general, be acquired by enthusiasts, who require feature-rich products. For this matter AOpen’s micro-ATX MK-89L based on nForce3 150 is a bit unique because of its form-factor and also because it lacks a certain important options, such as Serial ATA-150. This one, obviously, seems to be targeted on “ordinary” end-users, not hardware maniacs.

Take a look on the list of features and capabilities of AOpen MK-89L and AK-86L:

As you see, the AK-86L provides the "must be" functions of a relatively expensive mainboard for the Fall 2003 period, whereas the MK-89L seems to be a cost-effective solution that offers us only the capabilities supported by NVIDIA nForce3 150 logic, a not very long list, to tell you the truth.

Akiba PC Hotline Japanese web-site was first to publish some technical information as well as some pictures of AOpen Socket 754 mainboards here.