My Opinion of the ABit KD7 Raid I just got yesterday.

ok, I just got my KD7 raid yesterday and I will keep this simple.

first off, it's a very simple board, no gimmicks, no fancy sigma boxs or lights and whistles. No serial ATA (well, no drive on the market for it anyways so I don't care) it's certainly not much to look at, just an ugly brown board.

but beyond that WOW.
Bios is truely insane, when I first saw the Vcore, FSB options and DDR voltage I was just in awe, and scared too, cause I want to try it right now, but damn 2.35v on air would kill anything...
still gotta wait for my prometia before I try it.
I did 2.0 volts on air and reached a test FSB of 185 on first try.

185x7.5= about 1350 if I remember right.
it booted right up, no problems.
took a screen shot and went right back to bios and set everything back to default. I don't wanna push it far yet.

the instruction book is definatly meant for NewB's cause it's seriously simple. one of my favorite quotes

"usually the power is off when changing the CPU"

man, if they included some color crayons they could hand this book out to kindergartners.
what I mean, is it's very very easy to understand.
no scratching your head wondering, "so what exactly does that mean?"
the only problem?
the manual is very short, un thorough.
it's another book that has the instructions in 10 languages.
but they put everything on a CD incase you wanna see more.

let me see, on the CD theres one Program I love.
it's called "hardware monitor".
compared to my old soyo KT400 dragon ultra, that had a program monitor yet show 3 things...
the one that came with the Abit Kd7 was amazing.
every possible voltage and processor and fan speed thing is right there on this little "bar" thing. it's really really handy...
finally a company actually included a handy program with their hardware.

let me see...
what else.
I didn't have a single problem getting it up and running.
even with my CPU unlocked and my corsair 3500 it still booted everything just fine.

oh yeah, I REALLY REALLY love the ATX2 connection.
now my voltages are all Steady as hell, just looking at my voltages and seeing that nothings under spec even when overclocked is really cool.

I'll try to give more oninions soon.
gotta get back to finish a few things.

the board is a 9.
perfect, just alittle ugly.

Oh yeah, CPU socket.
it's very high, I had to take my power supply out to install my volcano 9. I'll explain more later...

OK, let me see.

oh yeah, the CPU socket is about my only gripe.

see it's very high on the motherboard.
at the very top actually. having a very large heatsink made it impossible to install the heatsink while the motherboard is mounted in the case.
cause there was only about a half inch between the Power supply and the Heatsink, there was no way I could even reach the snap with my phillips screw driver to get the heatsink secured.

so everytime I wanna change the CPU or anything concerning it, I have to remove the power supply from the case before I do it.

not fun, but nothing abit of patience wouldn't take care of.

basically for the the price, and performance so far, I have No regrets.

the heatsink issue can be worked around easily, and never needing to do a volt mod. well thats enough of a trade off for me.

Its designed wi the socket that high for a reason, if the screwdriver slips it goes off the board and does no damage, i agree the board is a good one and the voltages made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.
Ferret

I second what Ferrettt said.

I just upgraded from an Epox 8k3a+ to the KD7 about two weeks ago and it wasn't cause I didn't like the Epox. I had just gotten my xp2400 and while changing it out, the metal screwdriver clip on my Thermalright AX7 HS broken and the screwdriver DUG into to the memory traces between the CPU socket and mem slots of the Epox.

So I can truely appreciate the location of the CPU socket on the Abit board. If the clip on my SLK-800 breaks, the screwdriver goes in to the metal case vice the motherboard.

I got mine 3 days ago. I was impressed with the 5V reading: 5.03-5.05.
My previous board had 4.79 and some other boards had even less.
There was even a post in the forum how to make a second connection to the MB to get the 5V reading higher and closer to 5V...
With ATX2 connector this is solved!
Great board!

One thing - when the board is booting for first time (power supply was off) it doesn't start - it starts for less then a sec and stops. I have to hold the power button for 4 seconds and it does it again. after 2-3 tries it succeeds.
Then if I turn it off and start it - it starts immediately as it should.
I think it is some issue with the cheap power supply I have...
Anyway, great board!

Something to watch out for is the overheating of the Voltage Regulator MOSFET & seems to be the cause of some of these boards dying after a few days. It's a limited occurance but its better safe than sorry & have some counter measure in place.

Is this related to the system temperature reported 50 - 53 C?
I'm water colled so there is no fan around the CPU to cool down around it...
If I put my hand near the cpu I can feel that it is hot there. The cpu block itself is cold. Is 53C ok for the board? Or should I put some air-duct on the case fan?

Heh Heh I knew you would love this board Kunaak Good luck with it!

Duct a case fan to blow directly over it & if your so inclined a HS wouldnt be such a bad idea provided you don't short anything out.