Introduction

I would like to thank Albatron for supplying the tested motherboard.

After our recent review of the Albatron PX925XE, my contact at Albatron asked if I wanted to test a "very very fast and affordable" nForce4 SLI motherboard. First I was a bit sceptical about very very fast, but after reviewing this board I must admit he was right.



The Albatron K8SLI is based on NVIDIA's nForce4 SLI chipset. This chipset was the first platform to support PCI-Express and the dual-video card solution SLI and is now the prefered chipset when it comes to using AMD CPUs. It is available in three version "nForce4" "nForce4 Ultra" and "nForce 4 SLI".

Not only does the chipset support PCI-Express and SLI, it also has four SATA-II capable ports with RAID 0/1/0+1 support. Also integrated is a native Gigabit Ethernet controller which can be used with NVIDIA's own firewall solution and ten USB2.0 ports.

Features

Specifications from Albatron

Feature

• AMD Athlon™64 / Athlon™64 FX Processor
• Socket 939 with FSB 800/1000+ MHz
• 4 DDR333/400 Memory Sockets (Dual Channel).
• Built-in Realtek AC97 6 channel
• NVIDIA nForce4 SLI GbE LAN
• 2*PCI Express x 16 ( nVIDIA SLi technology support X8+X8 ,No support for ATi Radeon X300)
• 2*PCI Express x 1, 2*PCI Slots
• 4 Serial ATAII Channels, Serial ATA RAID 0,1& 0+1
• 2 ATA133 Channels, up to 4 ATA 133 IDE Devices
• Dual BIOS (Second BIOS by ABS Card) (Optional)
• 8 USB 2.0/1.1 Ports (4 ports by optional cable)

Processor

• Socket939 AMD Athlon™64 / Athlon™64 FX Processor

FSB

• 800/1000+ MHz

Chipset

• Chip : nForec4 SLI ( Single chip)
• LAN Chip : VITESSE VSC8201RX (PHY)
• Audio Chip : Realtek ALC655
• I/O Chip: Winbond Smart I/O W83627THF

Memory

• 4 * DDR Sockets:
• DDR 333/400 NON-ECC DDR SDRAM up to 4GB ( Dual Channel )

Expansion Slots

• 2 x PCI Express x 16 2*PCI Express x 16 ( nVIDIA SLi technology support X8+X8 ,No support for ATi Radeon X300)
• 2 x PCI Express x 1
• 2 x PCI slots (PCI 2.3 compliant)

IDE / SATA Connectors

• 2 ATA133 Channels, up to 4 ATA 133 IDE devices
• 4 Serial ATAII Channels, up to 4 Serial ATAII Hard Drives

Onboard I/O Connectors

• 1 x Floppy Connector
• 4 x USB 2.0/1.1 header (4 ports by optional cable)
• 1 x S/PDIF in/out header (S/PDIF in/out cable optional)
• 1 x CPU fan header ( 1 fan rotation detection function )
• 2 x System fan headers
• 2 x 5 pin system panel header (Intel spec)
• 1 x 3 pin Power LED header
• 1 x Front audio header (Intel spec)
• 1 x ABS header

I/O via Back Panel

• PS/2 keyboard/mouse, 2 x USB(2.0/1.1), RJ45,1 x Com(serial), 1 x Parallel, 1 x RCA,1x Line-in/Line-out(Speaker Out)

Power

• 24-pin ATX power connector, 4-pin ATX 12V power connector

BIOS Feature

• 4Mb Flash EEPROM
• Award BIOS with ACPI, DMI2.0, PnP, WfM2.0, Green Suspend to RAM (S3), Suspend to Disk (S4) Wake on keyboard/mouse, Wake on LAN/RTC Timer

Hardware Monitoring

• 3 FAN sensors, CPU/System voltages and temperature monitoring

Special Feature

• Zero Jumper Design
• Dual BIOS (Second BIOS by ABS Card) (Optional)
• Adjustable CPU frequency by 1 MHz increment, Adjustable Vcore,,VMemory for overclocking.
• Watch Dog Timer (auto-reset system when it can not handle overclock configurations)
• Special design for CPU Over Temperature Protection.( OTP )

Certifications

• FCC, CE, BSMI

Form Factor

• ATX ( 293x198 mm )