ABIT KV7 (KT600) Mainboard

What you get

Inside the KV7 package we find the KV7 mainboard, floppy drive ribbon cable, User's Manual, a quick installation guide, two SATA cables, SATA power cable, Support and Utility CDs, USB 2.0 bracket, I/O Plate and a UDMA ribbon cable.  I liked seeing the two SATA cables and the SATA power cable (with two SATA connectors) included with the board.  Priced at $80, ABIT is wanting to throw in the extras to emphasize the KT-600's native SATA support.

Layout and Features

The ABIT KV7 is a pretty small board.  Measuring 190 x 305mm it rates as one of the smaller boards I've ever seen that still carried five PCI slots.  As you can see, the KV7 sports five PCI, one AGP and three DIMM slots.  In spite of the small size of the board, the overall view doesn't look too cramped. 

From a top down view we can see how the five fan headers are spread out nicely over the board providing excellent access.  These headers are circled in yellow below.

Let's start out from a broad view and then narrow things down.  Starting with the top half of the board, while cramped, there isn't too much discomfort.  Three DIMM slots are positioned nicely so you won't have to be worrying about removing your VGA card to change memory.  This is generally the first problem you will find on a smaller board but not here.  The socket has, like most all other ABIT boards, the four holes drilled through the board for installation of a larger cooler requiring these if you go this route. 

  

To be sure that the KV7 is free from heatsink mounting or size problems we installed a ThermalRight SLK-800 and a fat Swiftech MCX462 and did not find any problems with capacitors butting into either cooler.  A tight but acceptable fit.  This has become increasing important as the size of some heatsinks has grown and surprised many when their boards couldn't handle them.  The SLK-900 is a good example of this.  Unfortunately, we did not have a SLK-900 on hand to try but anything that can take the big Swifty is likely to not have any problems elsewhere.

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