Click to view largerThe layout of the K7D Master is straightforward. The placement of the 24-pin power connector in the upper left corner alleviates having to contend with the power harness hanging across the platform. The 4-pin connector however is located just above the right corner of the AGP slot. This harness is much smaller and can be routed as not to interfere with the airflow of the case.
Something that has been a concern for many is the spacing of the sockets. In our review of the Thunder K7X Capacitor Row made it a tight fit while mounting heatsinks. MSI has left us a fair amount of room for mounting heatsinks.
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As you can see there is quite a bit of space to work with. Another thing you may or may not have noticed are the heatsink mounting holes thru the platform. This question has come up more than once, does the platform have these mounting holes and will it allow the mounting of Monster Heatsinks.
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Well the holes are there but it really depends on your definition of Monster. The spacing around CPU1 allows for a large Heatsink to be mounted BUT if you look at the picture above, the heatsink to the bottom left of the socket limits the space available for CPU2. Keep this in mind as you decide what heatsinks you are going to run.
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Looking at the K7D Master, you can see that MSI has included an AGP Pro slot, two 64bit/66Mhz slots and three 33Mhz PCI slots. The 64bit/66Mhz slots are now standard fair with these type platforms. With the utilization of a 64bit/66Mhz SCSI Raid controller the end user can achieve outstanding storage performance.
Jumpers, Jumpers everywhere but not a
, Oh wait that's NOT true. The K7D Master is almost a completely jumperless platform with the exception of JFSB1 and JBAT1.
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As you most likely assumed, the JBAT1 will allow you to clear your CMOS (Bios) settings and the JFSB1 sets the CPU bus speed from 100Mhz to 133Mhz. That is it no more, no less.
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The K7D Master comes with the standard connectors and ports plus onboard AC97 Audio is also included. Looking at the connectors and ports of the K7D Master reveals a lack of onboard USB support. Not to worry as MSI has included a four port USB 2.0 revision PCI card to handle all of your USB needs.
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In the picture of the K7D Platform, you can see that MSI has decided to utilize active cooling on the K7D Master's Northbridge Chipset. This is the first Dual Platform I have evaluated that has had this feature.
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Other platforms use a passive heatsink and even when these systems were pushed to their limit the heatsinks were just warm to the touch.
Another addition was are four small heatsinks added to help keep transistors cool.
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Again MSI has gone one step further to insure the quality and performance of their products.
