Athlon KX133 Motherboard Roundup - A Nail-Biting Affair

QDI Kinetiz 7A

On the QDI Kinetiz 7A the connector for the power supply is too close to the CPU slot, making it impossible to use large heat sinks with fan. As the only board in the test the QDI offers a piezo element. The heat sink on the north bridge is secured with a clamp.

Immediately visible is the appropriate packaging of the QDI. The shipment also contains a cable for the two additional USB connections. The quality of the handbook is rather average and leaves the user with a few open questions. The included driver CD should be out-of-date very soon. All clock adjustments can be made in the Bios, but friends of the overclocking will not be completely satisfied. Jumpers activate ACPI functions like save to RAM or the hardware antivirus recognition. As the only board among the test candidates the Kinetiz 7A offers a piezo element that makes buying a miniature speaker obsolete. The QDI comes with the common features: five PCI slots and one AGP, AMR and ISA slot, which is the standard for many test candidates. What we could not explain: In irregular intervals the QDI had problems with the GeForce cards by simply refusing to boot.