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Quality and Setup of the
MSI K7N2 Delta-ILSR |
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Packed with Modern Conveniences |
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The Board
There really is no mistaking
an MSI board when you see one. The PCB is of the
red flavor, as with any other MSI product, and each set
of connections is colored uniquely to aid in easy
identification of the board's components. The
board is clean and well thought out, although there are
some issues to touch on. The board sports a total
of 1 Red AGP, 5 White PCI and 1 Blue Advanced
Communication Riser (ACR) slot. Even with a total
of 7 slots on the board, MSI's engineers were able to
leave close to an inch of space between the AGP slot and
memory sockets to address the common problem of the
video card getting in the way of the DIMM retention
clips. The Northbridge of the nForce2 sports a
silver heat sink and fan assembly to help keep any
excess heat at bay, a nice touch that should aid in the
stability of the board. One thing you may notice,
however, is how close the HSF of the Northbridge comes
to the Socket A. In fact, the position of the CPU
socket seems completely offset, causing not only the HSF
of the Northbridge to crowd its space, but two
capacitors appear uncomfortably close as well.
When we see how much space is available between the
socket and the DIMMs, we are curious why the socket
couldn't be moved slightly to give a little more
breathing room for these components. Clearly this
can be an issue with an oversized heat sink and if you
are one of those using a cooler such as an Alpha PAL
series, you get burned twice not only by the lack room,
but also due to the omission of mounting holes needed to
secure it in place.
The IDE
connectors are aligned perpendicular to the bottom edge
of the board. Just above the IDE connectors is the
Promise PDC 20376 SATA 150 RAID controller which drives
two SATA ports located at opposite sides of the chip, as
well as one of the three IDE connectors. When it
comes to the power connectors, we found the placement
less than ideal, allowing the power supply cabling to
possibly drape over the top of the CPU cooler.
Conversely, we found the placement of the IEEE1394
headers to be excellent, just above the AGP slot,
although we were momentarily fooled. At first we
couldn't understand why they would place the header at
that location, forcing the wiring to be run over the
video card to the next available slot, since typically
the AGP slot occupies the first PCI space. In this
case however, MSI shifted all of the slots over so the
AGP slot is actually second in line, leaving the first
opening available for the IEEE1394 Bracket.
The K7N2
Delta-ILSR is not a completely jumperless motherboard,
which is typically a downside, but in the case of the
K7N2, we'll make an exception. Between the audio
outputs and the Northbridge were two green jumpers, one
of which was for setting the CPU FSB too either 100MHz
(open) or 133/166MHz (closed). The other was a FSB
Mode Jumper which comes in very handy during
overclocking. We've all done it, pushing the bus
speed so high that the system no longer posted, forcing
us to clear the BIOS and start over. With the FSB
Mode Jumper, all we had to do was set it to 100MHz
(Safe-Mode), boot the system, enter the BIOS and lower
the Bus speed. We could then set the jumper back
to User-Mode and boot the system normally. This is
a welcome setting that makes overclocking a little
easier and less time consuming because you need no reset
all of the other BIOS settings.
Aside from
the placement of the Socket A, this is a well thought
out motherboard that is clean, well organized and loaded
with features. Now we'll take a quick look at the
BIOS and see how MSI ties it all together.
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