We reviewed the single slot Abit AN8 Fatal1ty recently here at OcPrices.com and it was well received thanks to its fast, stable operation, good overclocking options and sensible layout. The board we have here offers more than just an update with an extra PCI-E slot!
As before, Abit have used a red PCB emblazoned with red LEDs when the motherboard is in operation. The OTES MOSFET cooler dominates the board, with its twin fans coming on when overclocking to keep the voltage chips at a reasonable temperature. Whilst this is great news for enthusiasts, it does cost the Abit board a lot of space at the back, meaning there is no parallel port, and the audio connectors have been moved to a PCI back plate.
The rest of the layout is sensible, with the PSU connectors well away from the CPU socket, plenty of room around the CPU for oversized coolers and excellent placement of the memory slots in relation to the video card. There is a single gigabit LAN port on the back plate, as well as 4 USB 2.0 and a single firewire port. Abit have used the standard SLI switch key design, so upgrading to dual video cards will require you to shift the key’s position. Thankfully this is unlikely to be something you will do every day.
The IDE connectors are placed at the bottom right of the board and are helpfully angled by 90 degrees. This makes it easy to tuck IDE cables behind the motherboard tray and also reduces the amount of twisting required. The floppy connector is unhelpfully placed under the bottom PCI slot, as is the additional SLI Molex connector. This is a shame, because the layout is otherwise excellent. Abit have included an LED post reporter, which makes diagnosing errors during boot much easier than most boards.
The Northbridge is cooled by an active copper chipset cooler that isn’t noisy in operation. The clear CMOS jumper is in a superb location well away from the add-on cards next to it. Below the chipset cooler are the four SATA connectors that use the on-chip nVIDIA SATA-II RAID controller. Whilst this will be adequate for most, it means the Abit has the joint lowest capacity for hard drives in the test.
There are a total of four fan headers on the motherboard, all of which can be controlled within the excellent BIOS.
