MODTHEBOX.COM - Canada's Premier Case Modding Source - Reviews - Albatron KX18D Pro II Motherboard Review

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The Albatron KX18D Pro II supports the Socket A AMD Athlon™/Athlon™XP/ Athlon™XP Barton/ Duron™Processors which operate on 200/266/333 and 400 Front Side Bus frequencies. The socket area is spacious for the most part with a few minor exceptions. Enthusiasts should note that the Albatron KX18D Pro II does not come with the 4 mounting holes around the socket for larger heatsinks and water blocks. A set of five capacitators are located near the bottom edge of the socket, which will be a probable factor when choosing or installing larger performance cooling solutions. The 20-pin ATX power connector is vertically placed to the far left of the motherboard easily out of place.

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The System Platform Processor (SPP) or Northbridge comes with a small active cooling solution. An aluminum heatsink paired with a small 40mm fan and stylish Albatron fan grill provide silent and sufficient cooling. A series of 2 mounting holes on either side allow users to replace the stock unit with a more powerful solution. Removing the unit reveals the NVIDIA nForce 2 Ultra 400 System Platform Processor which officially supports JEDEC certified PC3200/DDR 400 memory and 200 Front Side Bus AMD Barton CPU’s. The two independent Dual DDR 400 64-Bit memory controllers operate concurrently to deliver an impressive 6.4GB per second of memory bandwidth.

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The Albatron KX18D Pro II utilizes a Winbond W83627HF I/O chip and features a Keyboard/Mouse PS2, Serial, Parallel and Game ports at the rear. The integrated 10/100 LAN is handled via a PHY ICS1893AF chip. A set of two USB 2.0 ports are located directly below the integrated LAN. Line In and Out ports along with a Microphone jack are controlled via the Realtek ALC650 codec and NVIDIA’s Sound Storm Technology. The previously outlined bundled PCI backing card features additional SPDIF, Microphone and Headphone jacks for a 5.1 solution.