Abit continues uses their orangy-reddish-brown-rust-coloured PCB, which isn’t as slick or flashy as other coloured boards, but still a step up from your average ASUS-type ugly brown. This is a version 1.2 board, meaning that there are the four mounting holes (which have been now removed from AMD’s specifications) and higher voltage options in the BIOS, but it lacks the better nForce2 Ultra northbridge which the NF7/NF7-S version 2.0s use.
Sweeping from left to right (according to the first picture), there’s the undocumented Keyboard Power-On jumper, six MOSFETs for Abit pioneered three phase power, and the CPU socket which does indeed have four mounting holes. Although the socket area is relatively uncluttered with capacitors (all of Rubycon make, btw), the lugs which your heatsink needs to clamp down onto are right on the edge of the board, making installation of certain troublesome heatsinks even more troublesome. Installing any heatsink which the fan overshadows the heatsink required that I either remove the motherboard tray, remove the fan from the heatsink, and then screw it back on when the motherboard was in place, or remove the powersupply. It is practically impossible to mount the HSF any other way. There's a chance that this will be fixed in future board revisions, and I can only hope that it is.
While we’re near the CPU, is a nice amount of space between the CPU socket and the ram slots, although the ram being way out there may cause some physical interference with your drives. For those of you with full tower cases and the floppy drive at the top, you’ll be relieved to find that Abit listened to one of the most common layout complaints, and moved the floppy connector where it is more or less accessible by everyone, in the top right corner.
Stepping down a notch and going back over to the left, you’ll see that the Abit NF7-M makes use of the P4 AUX connector, and also has the ATX connector positioned there. ATX power cables on any power supply worth using are long enough for you to route around your HSF anyways, so it’s not much of a concern to me. Abit uses an active Northbridge HSF, and they’ve also applied a nice layer of thermal compound for you. The coupled thermal load of the nForce2 northbridge and GF4MX440 may prove to be too much for it in the end, however.
Down once more and to the left, there’s another undocumented jumper, to select 100FSB/133FSB operation. This is crucial in fixing a BIOS corruption issue, as I’ll later explain. Then we have the AGP 8x slot, with retention mechanism. If you plug in a video card, the Abit NF7-M will automatically disable the onboard video, no mess with jumpers or even BIOS here. What can and will result into a hassle however, are the DIMM slots, which require you to remove the AGP video card in order to install/remove ram. Still, it is entirely possible to run the NF7-M without any peripheral cards at all, in which case the AGP slot poses no problem.
There are 5 PCI slots, instead of the usual push for 6 which Abit loves to do. Again, due to the high level of integration, 6 are probably not necessary. Onboard 5.1 Channel sound with optical SPDIF out, Integrated GeForce MX440 class video, integrated network controller and six possible USB2.0 ports lessens the need for expansion greatly, if not entirely. Behind the PCI slots you will see a sticker with the model number and version of your motherboard. You’ll want to check this if you are buying it in person at a retail store, and try to get a version 2.0 board. If it’s something old like version 1.0, by all means do not buy the board. Wait until they restock with the latest version. For reference, the one I have here is version 1.2.
In the final corner of the board, you can see the MCP (southbridge), a sticker where the S-ATA controller on the NF7-S would be, motherboard pins for two USB 2.0 brackets or front connectors, for a total of four USB2.0 ports (perfect for you Lian-Li owners), the front panel connectors LED and switch connectors, replaceable Award BIOS (good if you kill it somehow, but obviously not as good as dual bios), and of course, the CMOS battery and clear CMOS jumper. Front panel connectors are here as well, unfortunately without label. You’ll need to refer back to the manual to guide you.
Abit uses a modified ATX double-stack set of connectors, and I have no complaints with their design. The USB ports and 10/100 Network jack are moved all the way down, and Abit implements a five jack audio solution, which allows you to have 5.1 channel audio without sacrificing line-in or microphone functionality. The MIDI/Gameport is lost, but you do have USB, so it's not a really big deal. Back on topic of audio, there is a single optical S/PDIF out, to connect to your hi-fi or minidisc player. As this configuration is non-standard, a compatible IO shield is included.
The board layout isn't terrible, but it's not really all that great either. Because of the malplaced CPU socket, plan on removing your PSU when intalling this motherboard, or hope that you're lucky and have a removable motherboard tray which slides out. Most users won't be messing around inside their computer more than once or twice, so it isn't a really big hit against the NF7-M.
