Athlon Hit Parade: 10 mobos with the nForce2 Ultra400

Leadtek K7NCR18D Pro 2, Continued

The positioning of the IDE connectors could have been better, because in the worst-case scenario the cables prevent the fitting of long expansion cards to all four PCI slots.

With the ideal timing of 5-2-2-CL2, the K7NCR18D Pro 2 would not operate with absolute stability. 7-2-2-2 was needed for this. This board does not break any records but the differences are negligible in practice - more emphasis should be placed on the internal values, and Leadtek has a lot of them to offer.

The Speed Gear main menu is well structured and gives you a good overview.

The options windows give you the opportunity to manipulate clock speeds and voltages.

Leadtek leads the second network connection, two FireWire ports and extra connections for the sound system out through an ACR card, thus avoiding a jumble of cables.

Silicon Image's serial ATA controller is an old friend.

On the back panel there are four USB ports, the audio sockets and the primary network connection.

A separate module with just one digital output is indeed almost a waste of space, but it's there, all the same.