Abit KN9 SLI

The K series has always been the budget version of the A and Fatal1ty series of Abit motherboards, but when we first saw this motherboard at CeBIT, we felt that it was worth having a look at it. When we first saw it, we were incredibly impressed with the board layout - it's probably one of the best we've seen. Looks are not everything though, so the question remains whether or not this board is worthy of consideration if you're looking to build a decent AM2 system on a budget. We hope to answer that for you over the course of this article...

Overview:

• Support for all Socket AM2 AMD Athlon 64/FX/X2 and Sempron processors with Cool 'n' Quiet technology;
  
• Four DDR2 memory slots supporting up to 8GB of DDR2-800 memory;
  
• NVIDIA nForce 570 SLI MCP;
  
• Dual Gigabit LAN provided by Marvell 88E1116-NNC1;
  
• Two PCI-Express x16 slots with SLI support (x16 & x1 or x8 by x8), two PCI-Express x1 slots and two PCI expansion slots;
  
• 7.1 channel Realtek ALC883 High Definition audio with jack sensing and optical & digital RCA S/PDIF Out;
  
• Six SATA 3Gbps ports, supporting RAID 0, 1, 0+1, 5 and JBOD;
  
• Support for ten USB 2.0 ports (four on back I/O panel and six via on-board pins/expansion brackets);
  
• Two IEEE1394a Firewire ports with internal headers;
  
• One ATA133 connector;
  
• One floppy connector.

Box Contents:

• SLI bridge;
  
• SLI retention bracket;
  
• Manual, Driver CD & floppy disks;
  
• Metal I/O Bracket;
  
• Six red SATA cables;
  
• 2 port USB 2.0, 6-pin and 4-pin Firewire PCI bracket;
  
• One black IDE cable;
  
• One black floppy cable.

The Abit KN9 SLI comes with an almost complete complement of extras in the box. There is a full set of SATA cables, IDE, floppy and all the firewire ports are covered on the PCI bracket, which even has the option of using either a 4-pin or 6-pin connector. However, you don't get a use for four of the extra six USB 2.0 pin outs on the board though: only two extra are given on the same PCI backplate as the Firewire ports. Despite this inadequacy being the only real shortfall in the KN9 SLI's bundle, there are usually extra USB 2.0 ports in cases or third party peripherals that route them to the front or top of the case for ease of use.