Microstar K7T Pro2 KT133 Socket-A ATX

The Bad

The DIMM slots are very close to the AGP slot, especially since Microstar puts now includes an AGP retention mechanism.  This means that you have to install the memory before the video card, otherwise the video card will block the clips of the DIMM slots. 

Microstar will not ship any Ultra ATA 100 controller with the K7T Pro2.  Although at this point no hard drive has a sustained transfer rate of higher than 40MB/sec, that will not be the case for long.  Hopefully Microstar will incorporate the 686B South Bridge soon, which adds Ultra ATA 100 support.

Moreover, Microstar does not ship the bracket required to take advantage of USB ports 3 and 4, provided by the 686A South Bridge.

D-LED is a very good feature that would be even better if they could be viewed from outside of the case, perhaps through the I/O shield.  Moreover, the Smart D-LED did not function properly in our evaluation sample, so we cannot judge how useful this feature is.

The manual is fair, but if Microstar put in more information about the installation of the motherboard, it would be much more helpful to new users.

USB Compatibility

·         Number of Front Universal Serial Bus Root Ports: 2

·         Number of Rear Universal Serial Bus Root Ports: 2

·         USB IRQ Enable/Disable in BIOS: Yes

Recommended SDRAM

Recommended SDRAM: 1 x 128MB Corsair PC133 SDRAM; 1 x 128MB Mushkin PC133 SDRAM

SDRAM Tested: 1 x 128MB Mushkin PC133 SDRAM

Manufacturer: Corsair
Purchase Website: http://www.corsairmicro.com

Manufacturer: Mushkin
Purchase Website: http://www.mushkin.com