Board Layout

Board Layout

We had plenty of room for our Alpha heatsink on the SA6R. In fact, we're pretty confident you won't have any problems mounting the majority of the heatsinks currently available on the market to the SA6R's PGA 370 interface.

Plenty of space between the capacitors and heatsink

Part of this is due to the size of the motherboard. The SA6R is roughly the same size as most of the KT133 motherboards we've tested with. This is in stark contrast to the CUSL2, which is much smaller.

Just what takes up so much space on the SA6R? Besides the HighPoint HPT370 chip (and the two additional IDE connectors it requires), the SA6R also features an onboard CODEC and Game/MIDI port, two things that are present on ASUS' aforementioned CUSL2. We'll talk about RAID a bit more on the next page.

Another addition ABIT adds to the SA6R is an onboard speaker. Yeap, you read it right, ABIT includes a built-in warning speaker with the SA6R. This can be a good thing if you're like us, and don't use the system case (as we don't test our systems in cases), but is an added cost for everyone else.

The chips

Onboard speaker

More details

Like most of ABIT's newer motherboards, the SA6R features a Power LED. As a result, you'll instantly know the moment your SA6R motherboard receives power. We were a bit disappointed with the location of the ATX power connector (just below the CPU interface). In its current position, the power cable must drape over the CPU heatsink/fan, which impedes air circulation. However, this same flaw is present on the CUSL2 -- our favorite 815 motherboard to date.

Unlike the CUSL2 however, with the SA6R, you'll have to install system memory before the AGP graphics card. Ideally, the gap between the AGP slot and DIMM socket needs to be a little larger.

Must install RAM first

Other features include dipswitches for adjusting CPU parameters manually, two fan headers at the top of the motherboard, and a third header at the bottom. About the only thing missing from the SA6R is a bank of diagnostic LEDs. To date, MSI is the only manufacturer that ships this as a standard feature with all their motherboards.