Board Layout

Spacing Issues

Like the newer KX133 designs the Trinity K7 nestles the power connector between the Slot A interface and DIMM slots. Fortunately, there is just enough room for larger heatsinks to fit comfortably in the Trinity K7 without interfering with any of the DIMM's.

The ATX power connector

Just enough space for our Alpha heatsink

More thoughts

Another thing you'll notice with the Trinity K7 is the lack of a heatsink on the Northbridge of the KX133 chipset. Previous KX133 motherboards we've reviewed have all had this feature. This was probably a cost-saving move by Tyan, in our tests we couldn't reveal any impact this may have had on system stability.

You'll also immediately recognize the massive heatsinks used for the voltage regulators, as well as the capacitors near the Slot A interface.

Look at those heatsinks!

Also, two fan headers are conveniently located just below the ATX power connector, perfect for CPU cooling fans. A third fan is located just below the motherboard battery for case cooling. We would have liked to see a fourth fan header near the PCI/AGP slots for a cooling fan behind the CPU but unfortunately this isn't present on the Trinity K7.

For expandability, the Trinity K7 features six PCI slots, and one ISA slot. Unlike most of the newer motherboards available today, the Trinity K7 lacks an AMR slot. Personally, we think this is a good thing, as we'd much rather stick with a dedicated sound card for our audio solution.

Oooh, 6 PCI slots!

Potential negatives

Ever since our experience with the MSI K7 Pro, we've closely watched the clock generator that ships with each motherboard we review. When we saw the ICS-64 clock generator was used, we were immediately skeptical of the overclocking ability of this motherboard. We'll talk about this in more depth on the next page.

The ICS clock generator

Another negative with the Trinity K7 is the jumpered design. Over the past year we've been spoiled by the numerous jumperless designs we've reviewed and we feel Tyan took a step in the wrong direction by reverting back to jumpers. Hopefully later revisions of this motherboard will feature a jumperless implementation.