MSI KM2M Combo-L - motherboard - micro ATX - KM266

Motherboards are critical to any computer. The selection is wide and the features each contains need to be closely looked at.

I was building a new PC and I came across this motherboard. It is a micro ATX board so is alot smaller than any ATX board so therefore has the disadvantage of not having much opportunity for expansion.

There are only three PCI slots which is fine if you do not require many but considering that ...
...then this does not leave many options if you wish to install these.

The board itself has many features and comes with onboard graphics and sound. The advantage of this is that money is saved on needing to buy a graphics card and sound card. The disadvantage of this is that if you do use the onboard graphics it uses your system memory and therefore can slow down the system. Also if you are into games then the graphics are not capable ... more

Motherboards are critical to any computer. The selection is wide and the features each contains need to be closely looked at.

I was building a new PC and I came across this motherboard. It is a micro ATX board so is alot smaller than any ATX board so therefore has the disadvantage of not having much opportunity for expansion.

There are only three PCI slots which is fine if you do not require many but considering that a modem, soundcard and now wireless cards need PCI slots then this does not leave many options if you wish to install these.

The board itself has many features and comes with onboard graphics and sound. The advantage of this is that money is saved on needing to buy a graphics card and sound card. The disadvantage of this is that if you do use the onboard graphics it uses your system memory and therefore can slow down the system. Also if you are into games then the graphics are not capable of running the latest game.

There is an AGP slot provided for expansion and the board although not said in the manual can support AGP 8X and will run at this speed if the card requires that.

The board can also support up to 4 IDE components and in my system I have 2 Hard Drives and a CDRW so there is still room for expansion if needed.

The board supports up to PC2700 Ram but if searched on crucial. Com/uk I found that the board can handle alot more memory than I was expecting. The max size of memory supported is 2GB and there are two DDR slots to do this. An advantage to this board is that it also contains 2 SDR slots for memory so if you have alot of SDR and don’t wish to upgrade then you can simply add this into the system instead of DDR and off you go.

The board is a Socket A board so support the AMD Athlon up processor. The FSB supported is 266 MHz which today is by far not the best speed but it is certainly capable of running at high speeds. The board can also be over clocked to run faster so if you are into pushing your computer to the limits then this board is capable of doing that.

The board also contains onboard LAN so there is no need to buy a network interface card. Considering the board’s low price and it is packed with feature this can satisfy users of all levels.

The board is easy to install and the motherboard manual provided explains everything you need to know in great depth and in an understandable way.

Overall I would highly recommend this board as it is stable easily overclockable and packed with features and for the price you cannot really go wrong. Well done MSI.

 

...less