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abit AB9 Pro

abit is a long time favorite of the PC enthusiast and gaming crowds alike. Today we take a look at one of their feature-packed P965 Express motherboards for Core 2 Duo and see if the new "Universal abit" is worthy of the old "ABIT" name.

Introduction

abit rises from the ashes of their recent restructuring like a phoenix. abit currently sells a wide range of motherboards targeted at mainstream and enthusiast computers. In the past abit has made some of the best overclocking boards around. Boards like the IT5H and BP6 will always have a place in the hearts of the overclocking enthusiast. These motherboards were quit innovative and in many ways ahead of their time. abit pioneered jumperless boards and BIOS overclocking. The AB9 Pro uses Intel’s highly overclockable and feature rich P965 Express chipset.

The AB9 Pro supports Intel’s legacy Pentium 4, Pentium D, and the newest Core 2 Duo CPUs. The board has a single PCIe x16 slot and is as such not Crossfire or SLi compatible. Memory speeds up to DDR 2 800 are officially supported. Following industry trends the AB9 Pro requires only a few components to operate as a full system. Components needed include a socket LGA775 processor, ATX 2.0 power supply, hard drive, DDR 2 memory and a PCI-Express x16 video card. abit integrated the following components into the AB9 Pro’s design: 1 EIDE ATA-133 port; 1 floppy port; 6 SATA 3G ports on the ICH8R south bridge; 2 SATA 3G ports on the JMicron 363 controller; 1 more SATA 3G and 1 eSATA port on the Silicon Image 3132 controller for a total of 10 SATA 3G ports, only one of which is external leaving you 9 on the motherboard for use inside the PC. Additional integrated components are: 10x USB 2.0 capable ports (4 in rear panel, and 3 onboard headers supporting 2 ports each.); 2 Gigabit Ethernet ports on the rear panel; On board 7.1 CH HD Audio CODEC

Supports auto jack sensing and optical S/PDIF Out ports on the back I/O panel and of course, standard PS/2 mouse and keyboard ports.

Main Specifications Overview

Detailed Specifications Overview

Packaging

The AB9 Pro comes in some of the best packaging in the industry. Everything is solidly placed and packaged inside. A photo of the board is in the center of the box, and blue menus are out to the sides of the motherboard image outlining the features of the board and finally at the bottom of the box you will find the abit logo, company information and RoHS compliance logo. abit has included the following items in the package; Quickstart guide; users manual; uGuru users manual; 4 floppy disks containing RAID drivers for 32bit and 64bit Windows versions; I/O Shield; 9 SATA cables; one ATA-133 cable; 1 floppy cable; and one IEEE1394 bracket. Oddly, there are no SATA power to 4 pin Molex converters with this board. While I personally don’t need them, some individuals might.

Board Layout

The layout of the AB9 Pro is serviceable and I would hesitate to call it good because there are some problem areas. First is the location of the ATA-133 EIDE port. The port is located between the legacy PCI slots and the newer PCIe x1 slots. 2 additional SATA ports are right above that slot, and are therefore misplaced as well. Like ASUS, abit has placed a SATA port near the top of the expansion slots near the backplane of the motherboard. I have never liked that, and since this seems to be a continuing trend for motherboard manufacturers I can’t complain too much about it, though I still don’t like it. The floppy port is as usual for abit, at the very bottom edge of the board, directly beneath the PCI slots. This is worse than typical abit fashion as this port is also at the very back of the PCI slot making it nearly impossible for the floppy cable to actually reach the floppy drive in many cases you’ll find on the market. Even routing the cable under the motherboard (which is abit’s explanation for placing the floppy port where it usually is) would prove difficult if not impossible. Power connections are generally well laid out and I have no major complaints here. abit in the past has put the extra 4 pin Molex connector for power PCIe slots for SLI systems at the bottom of the board near the last PCI slot which was an atrocity. It is nice to see abit didn’t do that here. The CPU socket is somewhat crowded, and I consider this probably the largest flaw of all in the design. The clearance around the sockets is something most people can live with, but it is far from ideal. The capacitors come from Rubycon and Okaya Electric Industries and are marked OKY. The PCB tested here was revision 1.0.

As I mentioned before the CPU area is crowded. There are capacitors and voltage components very near the CPU heat sink mounting area. This is fine for standard heat sinks and fans, but the more extreme solutions might have problems here.

The board’s 4 DDR 2 DIMM sockets are located in front of the CPU socket which is standard practice for most motherboard manufacturers. Unlike the CPU area and other areas on the board that aren’t laid out well, abit has managed to not fall victim of the most typical motherboard layout mistake made by most manufacturers today. You can install memory with any video card produced today installed. The DIMM socket lock tabs are far enough apart to prevent them from running into longer video cards like the 7950GX2.

The north bridge is located just to the left of the CPU as one would expect. The north bridge is cooled with abit’s silent OTES II heat pipe cooling solution. This is nice as there are no mechanical fans to fail or make unnecessary noise. At stock speeds the solution remained cool to the touch and overclocked, the temperature remained reasonable. There is also a fan header here to allow you to plug in a power cable for a fan should you choose to have some more extreme Northbridge cooling.

The south bridge is located directly in front of all the PCIe slots. The south bridge is cooled passively, with just a standard heat sink. During stock and overclocked operations, the chipset remained relatively cool to the touch and seemed adequate for the task.

The AB9 Pro has one PCIe x16 slot, and two PCIe x1 slots. The PCIe x16 slot operates at full speed and therefore has enough bandwidth to satisfy all modern graphics cards. There are also two legacy PCI v2.2 slots.

The AB9 Pro includes the following ports on the backplane; 1 PS/2 mouse port; 1 PS/2 keyboard port; 2 RJ-45 ports; 6 mini-headphone jacks for audio; 2 optical and SPDIF out connectors; one RS232 port; and one eSATA port.