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When looking over the board, there were a just couple of things that I really liked. There were also few small aspects that brought me some measure of disappointment. But for the most part, the overwhelming majority of what you'll see on this board is the industry standard. Don't get me wrong, the Fatal1ty is nice, but could have a few more bells and whistles added on.
Our first stop will obviously be with the audio expansion card. Most manufacturers are moving towards this card type design for the integrated sound. You can always leave it out and run some other sound card, but this AudioMax HD7.1 audio looks to be pretty nice. The conventional choice used to be RealTek audio, and it's still around, but AudioMax seems to be making some headway. Just look at the 7.1 chanel connectors. They may all be standard, but I just can't help but like them.
To start, I was quite happy to see the surface mounted post code display. This is quite the handy tool when trying to diagnose some mysterious hardware problem. As you can see in the following picture, this two character display indicates the boards status during booting and operations. There's a reference table in the Abit manual with four pages full of diagnostic codes. You can see in the following picture that our Fatal1ty board is showing an 'FF' code during normal operation. I checked the manual, but couldn't find the 'FF' post code reference. I'll just assume it stands for 'Freakin' Fine', or 'Fata1ty Fine' or something like that.
There's the running lights too. It's just some surface mounted LEDs tacked onto the board to help create some ambiance. You know, to shift the mood from 'Plain Jane' to 'Wildly Insane'. I counted six red LEDs on the back side of the board, with one green and one red LED on the top. They don't really make any difference as to the performance aspects of the Fatal1ty, but they do look nice.
Moving on, I really liked the retention clips for the PCI Express graphics cards. This little spring loaded nugget works well in retaining the card, and it's really easy to press down when removing the card. Again, this one little feature doesn't make the Fatal1ty something absolutely and perfectly new. It just goes to show that Abit cared enough to build this board as best they could.
As for the odd I/O shield and included fan, I'm a little divided on this one. For what ever reason, Abit decided to give the axe to about half of all the rear I/Os. Electing to replace them with a fan grill is an odd idea, to say the very least. This might help to exhaust some of the hot air that swarms around the processor heat sink, but I doubt this was the reason. This is an enthusiasts board, and any enthusiast in their right mind wouldn't even touch a stock cooler, let alone buy one. So, this rear fan may help to keep some things cool, but its diminutive size won't do much to help. Besides, we can see the two motherboard mounted fans right in behind the VCM (Voltage Controller Module). Personally, I would perfer to reduce the number of fans in my case, not increase their count. Their noise does add up.
Well, I've given you those couple positives that I found with the Abit Fatal1ty. On to the negatives.
I was thoroughly disappointed to see that Abit hasn't yet made the total switch to solid state capacitors.Granted, there are a cluster of solid states up with the VCM (Voltage Controller Module), perhaps the best place to put them. You can see in the following picture, the silver and blue capacitors are solid state, while the old school electrolytic are tall and black.
But for the most part, I found nothing but the old electrolytic type living on the Fatal1ty, and that threw me for a loop. As capacitors go, solid state is far superior over the electrolytic type. The electrically capacitive polymer used in solid states has more than ten times the charge cycle life than electrolytes. That's why video cards were the first pieces of hardware to use solid states. The constant charging and discharging for cleaning up dirtied current adds electrical stress to the capacitor casing and substances within. Eventually, these old solid state capacitors will fail, whilst the electrolytes will live on for years to come. Abits choice to use these old solid states was probably in the interest of clearing out some old parts stock. Many other board manufacturers have made the transition to solid state, and Abit should try doing the same.
One thing I would have liked to have seen was a CMOS clear button, and not the old and antiquated jumper style CMOS clear. There is a reason for this though, and it lies with the after market part Abit is selling. I can defiantly say, I want one of these.
The µGuru Panel is an add-on accessory that fits in your 5 1/4" drive bay to provide the user with some extra little features. As you can see, there is a IEEE1394 jack, and a pair of USB2.0 jacks for quick connectivity. But where the µGuru Panel really shines is the quick overclocking and diagnostic features.
- OneTouch programmable overclocking presets
- Clear CMOS button
- MHZ Frequency monitoring (CPU/RAM/PCI-E)
- Voltage monitoring (CPU/RAM/PCI-E)
- Fan speeds (CPU/NB/System/AUX/AUX2/OTES)
- Temperature readings (CPU/System/PWM/Room)
- Front panel Inputs (USB/FireWire/Microphone/Headphones)
- MSN/E-mail notifications
- Large backlit 5-phase LCD
That would be quite the cool add-on for the Abit Fatal1ty. A sweet panel like that with one button overclocking, I would have jumped at the chance to try it out and dedicate a page to it in this review. Unfortunately, Abit never provided us with one of these µGuru Panels, just the Fatal1ty board. Now if Abit were to ship us one, I would bust out the Fatal1ty and do a follow up appendage to this article on the aspects of the µGuru Panel. This panel would be nice, but you can still perform the same tasks using the µGuru Utility and or the BIOS. This 'On the Fly' overclocking can be quite hard for most manufacturers to accomplish. But Abit does so with their µGuru Chip.
This chip is an interfacing level between the BIOS and the user. Whether it be tweaks through the µGuru Utility, or one button overclocks from the µGuru Panel, this chip makes it possible.
The passive heat sink and heat pipe cooling is decent enough. When running the Fatal1ty through its paces, I would occasionally touch the heat sinks and or pipe to see what kind of heat was being created. There was very little, going to show that passive cooling designs do actually work. So Abit is commended on their cooling solution for this board.
But one aspect of this passive cooling design Abit employed was disappointing to say the least. The heatsinks and heatpipe are fine, but the thermal interface material is sub-standard. Abit used a type of thermally conductive rubber. It's kinda like thin Latex sheets. And though this material does transfer heat well enough, it doesn't hold a candle to thermal paste. Even the white Zinc Oxide thermal paste is hordes better than thermal pads. And if you really want to chill those chips, yank of the coolers (gently), and apply a few dabs of Arctic Silver where necessary. Abit could have done just a bit better with the Fatal1tys cooling solution.
And one final disappointment with the Fatal1ty board. I know some might say I'm splitting hairs over this one, but I really would have liked to have seen a second IDE port. Old IDE may be antiquated, and the six SATA ports do than more make up for it, but that one extra IDE channel would have allowed for just a little more storage capabilities down the road. At least all of the SATA ports are clustered togeather and not strewen about the motherboard. That makes connectivity a little bit easier. Oh, and check out the little tiny thermal probe I found on the back side of the Fatal1ty motherboard. It lives right under the Southbridge and probably picks up the system tempature readings. Pretty standard, though interesting to see.
All in all, the AN9 32X Fatal1ty board from Abit is very nice, very nice indeed. From what we've glanced thus far, there isn't really anything bad to say about the Fatal1ty. Sure, there are a couple small avenues where there could have been some improvement, but nothing so glaringly obvious that it detracts from the board as a whole. Now it's time to move onto what is perhaps the most important part of any motherboard, the BIOS.