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Board Layout
The KM4M-L has more than a few heatsinks
spread about the board, mostly in the power regulation circuitry. This is a
touch usually reserved for highly overclockable high end boards, and is nice
to see this working down to the less pricy models. The board is notably
equipped with the auxiliary 12V connector, generally a feature on Pentium
boards. The higher end AMD chips do make use of it as a means of electrical
isolation, and with most modern power supplies featuring this output there
is no reason not to use it. Unless you’re using something faster than 2800+
or so, you probably won’t need the extra juice. The CPU socket is well
clear of any obstructions, and installation of CPUs and heatsinks should be
trouble free.
**click to enlarge**
The
rear I/O panel has a full set of connectors. The only item I was looking for
and didn’t find was an optical out. The KM4M also carries the almost but not
quite obsolete parallel port, plus a serial port, Ethernet, two USB, Video,
PS2 keyboard and mouse, and three audio connectors.
VIA KM400 Chipset
This chipset is the fourth generation chipset released by VIA in support of
the Athlon XP CPUs. This system consists of the traditional Northbridge and
Southbridge arrangement that we’ve been seeing on AMD systems for a long
time now.
The integrated graphics solution is not the greatest, and if you’re looking
to set up anything more complex than basic gaming and internet you’ll need a
video card. The UniChrome graphics are actually part of the KM400
Northbridge, so a little later we’ll run PCmark02 with and without a video
card to help gauge the impact of the integrated graphics solution on system
resources.
One item that was ‘missing’ was SATA support.
The VIA VT8237 Southbridge has support for SATA, but this board comes with
the VT8235, which does not. The only other difference between the two chips
is the VT8235 comes with six USB 2.0 ports, and the VT8237 comes with eight.
The KM4M-L board can support the VT8237 chip, made apparent by the bare USB
2.0 ports on our VT8235 equipped board. I think the few extra dollars would
be worth getting just for the extra USB support, especially if one is
setting up a media center system.
Clearly there is Firewire capability on this
board, but it has not been added to this model. The missing VT6036 Fire II
chip attests to that fact.
The AC’97 six channel audio in the VT8235 Southbridge is a welcome addition,
alleviating most of the need for an audio card. If you’re using this with
high performance speakers, you’ll probably want the upgrade anyhow. Still,
it is nice to not have to buy all that expensive gear at once.
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