Albatron KX18D Pro II

IDE Connectors

• 2 ATA133 channels, up to 4 ATA 133 IDE Devices

Onboard I/O Connectors

• 1 x Floppy Connector
• 2 x USB 2.0/1.1 header (4 ports USB cable optional)
• 2 x IEEE1394 header (2 ports IEEE1394 cable optional)
• 1 x CD_IN header
• 1 x COM Port header
• 1 x S/PDIF in/out header (S/PDIF in/out cable optional)
• 1 x CPU fan header with fan rotation detection function
• 1 x System fan headers with fan rotation detection function
• 1 x 10 pin system panel header (Intel spec)
• 1 x 3 pin Power LED header
• 1 x 4 pin Speaker header
• 1 x Front audio header (Intel spec)
• 1 x Case Open detection header
• 1 x Wake on LAN

I/O via Back Panel

• PS/2 keyboard/mouse, 2 x USB(2.0/1.1), RJ45 ,1 x Com(serial), 1 x Parallel, 1x Game/Line-in/Line-out/MIC

Power

• 20-pin ATX power connector

BIOS Feature

• 4 Mb Flash EEPROM
• Award BIOS with ACPI, DMI2.0, PnP, WfM2.0, Green Suspend to RAM (S3), Suspend to Disk (S4) Wake on keyboard / Mouse, Wake on LAN/RTC Timer

Hardware Monitoring

• 2 FAN sensors, CPU/System voltages and temperature monitoring

Special Feature

• Zero Jumper Design
• BIOS Mirror Protect BIOS by creating an original mirror image of itself
• Voice Genie Voice Troubleshooting system ( four-Language )
• Adjustable CPU and AGP frequency by 1 MHz increment, Adjustable Vcore, VAGP, VMemory for overclocking.
• Special design for CPU Over Temperature Protection.( OTP )

Certifications

• FCC,CE, BSMI

Form Factor

• ATX (244*305 mm)

The contents of the package are pretty standard when it comes to motherboards. Along with the board came several IDE ribbon cables, a floppy cable, and a nice molex to SATA power adapter for your power supply. I love when companies throw in useful little add-ons like these into a board package. What confuses me is why there is only one. One of the main features of this board is the SATA RAID that is on-board. If someone wants to take full advantage of this, but is unfortunate enough to only have a power supply with standard molex connections, they will be one connector short. I may be jumping to conclusions, but an extra one thrown in would be a little padding for my power issues.

The board also included additional PCI slot covers (brackets) with both 4 USB connections and 2 IEEE1394 Firewire connections. I always enjoy some additional hookups for a motherboard. In certain cases, I can have 4-6 USB peripherals hooked up to my PC at one time. Whether it is a compact flash card reader, my mouse, a game controller, a webcam, etc....multiple USB ports are a must-have with more and more hardware using the USB interface. There is also a nice SPDIF I/O add-on for the audiophiles out there.

Hrmmmmm??? No I/O shield included? Shocking to say the least, but there wasn't an I/O shield to be found on this puppy. I don't know about you, but I think that it's the least a company can do to help a consumer out. I'm not sure if companies just think that it is something that can be "skipped over", but I expect to be able to have a decent I/O shield on the motherboard. Give me some rinky-dink one if you have to, but to leave one out all together seems very odd to me.

The board also comes with a nice little instruction sheet with the layout of the board and detailed pictures of installation. Manuals for the board, the built in Silicon SATA RAID controller, and an installation CD including the drivers and PC-Cillin are also included in the bundle.