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 )

Packaging

The motherboard comes in a green military colored package. That dual barrel tank looks really powerful, I bet every army in the world would like to have some of these. Anybody remember the Apocalypse tank from Red Alert 2?


On the backside is a picture of the motherboard where the most important features are listed.


When you open the package, everything that is included pops right into your face.


Under the cables and manuals you find the motherboard in an anti-static bag, which I removed to get a nicer picture.