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Motherboards are one of the most critical
components to consider in any system build. It is one of the ‘holy trinity’
of your system that will determine overall performance, along with the CPU
and RAM. Even on a cheap build, you should spend the most thought and
resources on these three components. Micro-Star International (MSI) is one
of the leading players in this all important sector of the computer market
and today we have the pleasure of taking a look at one of their new micro
ATX motherboards – the KM4M-L.
Packaging & Contents
The
KM4M-L arrived in excellent condition. The retail box was very similar to
the one the KM2M Combo L was in.
**click to enlarge**
The
package of goodies supplied with this motherboard is very good considering
the low cost. Included in the bundle are two rounded cables; one floppy and
one IDE, driver CD, I/O plate, Manual, and case badge. The cables are the
usual ribbon cables that have been given a sleeving and heatshrink job, but
are nice to have.
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**click to enlarge** |
**click to enlarge** |
The
KM4M-L itself is a very sexy board to look at with its edge mounted
connectors and deep red PCB. With all that design attention I’m surprised
that the 12V P4 auxiliary socket ended up in the middle of the board, but as
small as it is I’m sure there was an engineering reason for doing that.
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**click to enlarge** |
**click to enlarge** |
This item also caught my attention. Usually you have to dig out the manual
or one of those ‘pin layout’ stickers every time you install the board to
figure out what chassis connectors go where. On the KM4M-L the layout is
color coded with the polarity and function actually marked well enough that
you probably won’t need a diagram to figure it out.
Specifications
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CPU
• Supports AMD® Athlon™/Athlon™ XP/Duron™ processor
• Supports up to Athlon™ XP 3000+ processor
• FSB@200/266/333MHz
Chipset
• VIA® KM400 Chipset
- Supports 200/266/333MHz front side bus
- Supports DDR200/266/333
- Supports AGP 4X and AGP 8X
- Integrated S3 Graphics UniChrome™ 2D/3D Graphics with
motion compensation
• VIA® VT8235 Chipset
- Integrated Direct Sound AC'97 audio.
- Dual channel Ultra DMA 33/66/100/133 master mode EIDE
controller.
- ACPI & PC2001 compliant enhanced power management.
- Integrated USB 2.0 controller.
- Integrated LAN MAC. |
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Main Memory
• Supports four memory banks using two 184-pin DDR DIMM.
• Supports up to 2GB PC1600/PC2100/PC2700 DDR SDRAM.
• Supports 2.5v DDR SDRAM. |
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Slots
• One AGP (Accelerated Graphics Port) 1.5V 4X/8X slot.
• Three 32-bit PCI bus slots (support 3.3V/5V PCI bus
interface). |
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On-Board IDE
• An IDE controller on the VT8235 chipset provides IDE HDD/CD-ROM
with PIO, Bus Master and
Ultra DMA133/100/66 operation modes.
• Can connect up to four IDE devices. |
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Audio
• AC'97 link controller integrated in VIA® VT8235
• RealTek ALC655 6-channel audio.
- Compliance with AC'97 v2.3 Spec.
- Meet PC2001 audio performance requirement. |
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LAN
• VIA Fast Ethernet LAN.
- With external VT6103 Fast Ethernet PHY &10/100 Base-T Lan
transformer.
- Integrated Fast Ethernet MAC and PHY in VT8235.
- Supports 10Mb/s and 100Mb/s auto-negotation operation.
- Compliance with PCI v2.2 and PC99 standard.
- Supports ACPI power management. |
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On-Board Peripherals
On-Board Peripherals include:
- 1 floppy port supports 2 FDDs with 360K, 720K, 1.2M, 1.44M
and 2.88Mbytes.
- 1 serial ports (COM A) and 1 VGA port.
- 1 parallel port supports SPP/EPP/ECP mode.
- 6 USB 2.0/1.1 ports (Rear x 4/ Front x 2)
- Vertical audio ports
- 1 RJ-45 LAN jack |
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BIOS
• The mainboard BIOS provides "Plug & Play" BIOS which detects
the peripheral devices and
expansion cards of the board automatically.
• The mainboard provides a Desktop Management Interface (DMI)
function which records
your mainboard specifications. |
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Dimension
• 24.4 cm(L) x 22.4 cm(W) MicroATX Form Factor
Mounting
• 6 mounting holes. |
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