Old Asus K7M (for Athlon) Review
Asus K7M (for Athlon) Review
by William Henning
Editor, CPUReview
Copyright February 13, 2000
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Introduction
In my previous Athlon reviews (Athlon 600MHz Review, Athlon 1GHz review) I covered the AMD Fester motherboard and the GigaByte 7iX.
I thought it was time to start reviewing Athlon motherboards; and first up is the Asus K7M (rev. 1.04).
This motherboard has been on the marked for a couple of months; but only recently has Asus acknowledged its existence. Earlier versions were shipped with generic “white book” documentation that did not identify the board as an Asus product; however the version I received was clearly identified as an Asus motherboard, both on the motherboard and in the manual.
The k7m motherboard
Look at all those capacitors behind the Slot A connector! Also look at the two capacitors in front of it… they were a bit of a pain in the posterior.
[Find current low pricing on the Asus K7M]
What you get
So what do you get for your money?
* The motherboard (duh)
* A manual (make that an excellent manual)
* A driver CD
* floppy cable
* A UDMA 66 IDE cable
* USB port mounting bracket / cable (for the third and fourth ports)
* universal CPU retention module
The Motherboard
The K7M is based on the AMD 751 (Irongate) Northbridge, with a VIA 686 Southbridge. The 751 chip on this motherboard was of revision C6.
k7m manual
Motherboard Features
* 305mm x 213mm (12″ x 8.4″)
* Slot A for Athlon 500-750+
* 3x 168 pin DIMM sockets for up to 768Mb PC100 SDRAM
* ECC support
* AMD-751 Northbridge w/ 200MHz FSB (100MHz DDR)
* VIA 82C686A Southbridge w/ UDMA66, AC97 audio
* AD1881 3D Enhanced Codec
* Winbond W83782D hardware monitoring chip
* 1 AMR slot (for audio/modem riser card)
* 1 AGP Slot (AGP 1x / 2x)
* 5 PCI slots
* 1 ISA slot (shared with last PCI slot)
* supports up to 4 UDMA33/66 EIDE devices
* PS/2 keyboard and mouse ports
* 4 USB ports (two on motherboard, two on mounting bracket)
* 1 EPP/ECP parallel port
* 2 Enhanced serial ports
* 1 Game/MIDI port
* Line In / Out / mic audio ports
* 2Mbit Flash for BIOS
* AMI Green PnP BIOS
* “Jumper Free” CPU/DIMM bus frequency adjustment
[Find current low pricing on the Asus K7M]
Bundled Software
* ASUS PC Probe system monitoring utilities
* Trend PC-cillin Anti-Virus utility
* YAMAHA XG50 Software Wavetable
* IDE / AGP / Audio drivers
System Configuration
* OEM Athlon 500 processor
* Globalwin VEK32 heatsink/fan
* Enhance Technologies ATX-730 300W power supply
* Asus K7M rev. 1.04 motherboard
* Diamond Viper 770 Ultra video card
* on-board audio
* 2x 64Mb Goldstar 7ns PC100 memory
* Quantum 10.2Gb EX hard drive
* Pioneer 6x DVD driver
* AOpen ANL-201 network card
* Windows 98 Second Edition
* DirectX 7
* VIA irq/ide/sound drivers
* AMD 4.5 Gart driver
k7m cables
Comments on the configuration
The VEK32 is a monster heatsink/fan; one well suited to overclocking 
The ATX-730 is one of the best power supplies made, it is the one currently being shipped with the Sys Cold Fusion 1000 (1GHz Athlon) computers.
I chose the Diamond Viper 770 Ultra for this system as it was also used in my original Athlon 600 review.