Abit AN-M2HD mATX Motherboard
Installation and Test setup
Published: 20th January 2008 | Source: Abit | Price: £52.01 |
Installation
The size of this board means that its simply a breeze to install into a normal size system. Upon mounting it in its testbed the most time consuming part of it was putting in the screws that held the board to the standoffs!
AMD's mounting system contributed to the the ease of installation. With two clips and what I can only describe as a retention arm and your ready to go (remembering the thermal paste of course).
The only niggle I came across was after installing my Arctic Freezer heatsink it would have been difficult to get RAM into the first two slots due to the DIMMs being so close to the socket. But had I installed them the other way around there was still clearance for the sticks, so the board can't really loose point for this minor inconvenience.
I can't imagine the board being too much of a hassle even when installing it in a mini HTPC case.
Testing
The setup used to put this board though its paces consisted of the following components:
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+
Abit AN-M2HD
1GB Crucial Ballistix PC6400
Hitachi 7K160 80GB
Seasonic M12 600W
Method
The size of this board means that its simply a breeze to install into a normal size system. Upon mounting it in its testbed the most time consuming part of it was putting in the screws that held the board to the standoffs!
AMD's mounting system contributed to the the ease of installation. With two clips and what I can only describe as a retention arm and your ready to go (remembering the thermal paste of course).
The only niggle I came across was after installing my Arctic Freezer heatsink it would have been difficult to get RAM into the first two slots due to the DIMMs being so close to the socket. But had I installed them the other way around there was still clearance for the sticks, so the board can't really loose point for this minor inconvenience.
I can't imagine the board being too much of a hassle even when installing it in a mini HTPC case.
Testing
The setup used to put this board though its paces consisted of the following components:
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+
Abit AN-M2HD
1GB Crucial Ballistix PC6400
Hitachi 7K160 80GB
Seasonic M12 600W
Method
To test the motherboard I first ran it at stock using as stress test comprising of Orthos (dual Prime95), Folding @ Home running on both cores (set to idle priority) and RTHDRIBL running 1/2 screen. I let this run for 12hours to see how the board would fare.
The benches and tests used on the motherboard were:
Super PI 1m and 32m
SiSoft Sandra:
Processor Arithmatic
Procsssor Multemedia
Memory Bandwidth
Memory Latency
3DMark05 and 3DMark06 @ 1024 x 768 and 1280 x 1024
Highest playable settings:
* Counter Strike Source
* F.E.A.R.
*The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion
Windows Media and Quicktime HD Playback
HD Tach
Cinebench:
CPU Rendering
All tests are run three times for consistency and the averages given.
Note also that all of our motherboard tests also mean the we "live" with the motherboard for a two week period to make sure any issues are found.
The benches and tests used on the motherboard were:
Super PI 1m and 32m
SiSoft Sandra:
Processor Arithmatic
Procsssor Multemedia
Memory Bandwidth
Memory Latency
3DMark05 and 3DMark06 @ 1024 x 768 and 1280 x 1024
Highest playable settings:
* Counter Strike Source
* F.E.A.R.
*The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion
Windows Media and Quicktime HD Playback
HD Tach
Cinebench:
CPU Rendering
All tests are run three times for consistency and the averages given.
Note also that all of our motherboard tests also mean the we "live" with the motherboard for a two week period to make sure any issues are found.
Most Recent Comments
Ye the board is great VFM, even though AM2 get's shown up a littleQuote
nice review hambo 
nice mobo for a budget build..Quote
nice mobo for a budget build..Quote
CSS Valid
I might build a second system on a board like that, processor for £40ish and any old ram, bargaintastic!Quote