First Impressions:

The first thing I noticed on the board is the 4 USB ports integrated onto the board with an integrated LAN port next to the lower pair; as well as the horizontal layout of the audio ports instead of the standard vertical one. This only meant one thing to me, that there was a nonstandard back plate, and sure enough there was. Another thing that caught my attention was the SATA connectors on the board. For those thinking about switching to SATA in the future, this is something to consider.

With the board came an ACR card: the K7NFAL. This card has an additional LAN port, an optical output port, output ports for a subwoofer, and the rear channels, and a firewire port. With the firewire port you have the option of either having it stick out the back or using the ones supplied with your case (if any). To do this, all you have to do is used the supplied connectors on the K7NFAL. Unfortunately you can only use one at a time. Meaning if you use the rear one, you will not be able to use the With this card, the K7NCR18D-ProII almost becomes a full multimedia port. All you’re really missing on this board to make it a full fledge multimedia board would be integrated video. This option is available on the G variant of the board.

Throwing together the board in the system proved fairly simple. I was worried about the power connector being so close to the socket. Therefore I took it upon myself to put on the largest heatsink I could find. I slapped on my Swiftech MCX462 and although it was close, the ATX power connector slid in perfectly without any contact with the heatsink. I guess the slid the power connector slightly lower from the younger generation of this board. Another improvement on this board, although very minor, is the use of different colors on the DIMM slots making it easier to differentiate which slots you have to use to take full advantage of the dual channel mode of the board.

One thing I didn’t like about the layout of the board however was the location of the IDE channels. They’re located on the bottom right corner of the board. For those people who use larger cases, this might pose a problem. The IDE cables provided with the board may not be sufficiently long to reach the top of the case. However those using midtowers, like I have for this test system, a standard length cable should suffice.

Another thing that sort of annoyed me with the board, but doesn’t affect performance whatsoever is the lack of 3 pin fan connectors. I was only able to locate two of them: the obvious one being the CPU fan connector and the second being the chipset fan connector. More on the board would have been useful, for those like me who like to monitor their casefan speeds.