ABIT BH7 Motherboard

Company: ABIT
Product: BH7 - P4 845PE Motherboard
Street Price: ~$95 USD
Date Reviewed: March 20, 2003
Reviewed By: Joey C. aka Chong345
Overall Rating: (9.3/10)

Introduction:

Recently ABIT has been releasing motherboards that are not only good in terms of overall stability and performance but also excel overclocking. I personally have not seen a company come right out and say that "this board is designed for overclocking". That is exactly what ABIT did with the BH7, it is “built for overclockers by overclockers.” There has been a lot of anticipation of this motherboard since it was made with the overclockers in mind and today we get to put it to the test.

Specifications:

The BH7 is based on the Intel 845PE chipset, which supports DDR333 and hyper-threading. The mainboard utilizes 4-phase power. This will help to increase stability by delivering enough power even while overclocking. ABIT engineers believe that with this 4-phase power, that the motherboard will be able to support the upcoming 800 MHz FSB CPUs.

The motherboard also only uses Rubycon capacitors. These are some of the highest quality and the whole board only uses them. Every single capacitor is a Rubycon. Therefore, with these high quality capacitors and 4-phase power, this board should be an awesome overclocker.

Processor:
- Supports Intel® Pentium® 4 Socket 478 processors with 533/400MHz FSB
- Supports Intel® Hyper-Threading Technology

Chipset:
- Intel 845PE/ICH4 chipset
- Supports Hi-Speed Universal Serial Bus (USB 2.0)

Memory:
- Three 184-pin DDR DIMM sockets (Un-buffered Non-ECC DIMM)
- Supports 2 DIMM DDR 333 (Max. 2GB)
- Supports 3 DIMM DDR 266/200 (Max. 2GB)

Serial ATA 150:
- On board Silicon Image Serial ATA PCI Controller
- Supports 1 port SATA 150 (1.52GB bps)

Audio:
- 6-Channel AC 97 CODEC on board
- Professional digital audio interface supports 24-bit S/P DIF optical IN/OUT

LAN
- On board 10/100MB PCI Ethernet Controller

System BIOS:
- SoftMenu™ Technology to set CPU parameters
- Supports Advanced Configuration Power Interface (ACPI)
- Supports Desktop Management Interface (DMI)

Internal I/O Connectors:
- 1 x AGP slot
- 5 x PCI slots
- 1 x Floppy Port supports up to 2.88MB
- 2 x Ultra DMA 100/66/33 Connectors (Support 3 devices)
- 1 x Serial ATA 150 Connectors
- 1 x USB 2.0 headers
- 1 x CD-IN, 1 x AUX-IN
- 1 x IrDA

Back Panel I/O:
- 1 x PS/2 Keyboard, 1 x PS/2 Mouse
- 1 x Serial Port connector, 1 x Parallel Port connector
- 1 x S/PDIF IN connector, 1 x S/PDIF Out connector
- 1 x Audio connector (Center/Subwoofer, Surround Speaker, Front Speaker, Line-in, Mic-in)
- 4 x USB Connectors, 1 x RJ-45 LAN Connector

Miscellaneous:
- ATX form factor
- Hardware Monitoring - Including Fan speed, Voltages, CPU, and System temperature
- Supports Wake Up by LAN, Modem Ring, RTC Alarm, Keyboard and Mouse Power On

*Specifications courtesy of ABIT