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ABIT AB9 Pro Motherboard
Price Range
$84.99
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Overall Rating
4 Star Review
Reviewed by: datsel
Updated:06-30-07
Duration of ownership:14 Days
Strengths: Lots of SATA connectors, support quad and extreme duo processor with bios version 1.6 or newer.
Weaknesses: Very buggy bios, so it need an bios update. Came with P965 Express Chipset instead of P975.
Overall Evaluation: I Encountered the dreaded 2A/7F post code problem on first boot. However, after a quick bios update, this motherboard work like a charm. This was a Stable overclocker board with lots of features. I'm using this board with a Core 2 Duo E6600, 2x1GB G.SKILL RAM, and a 750GB hard drives. Overall, this is a great motherboard and I'm very happy with its performance.
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Overall Rating
5 Star Review
Reviewed by: revolter
Updated:06-23-07
Duration of ownership:
Strengths: for the price you hardly find better equipped board
Weaknesses: I thought it is not stable, boy was I wrong, it turned out to be one of most stable boards I ever had once I updated BIOS !
Overall Evaluation: you can't go wrong here with this board, there is everything you could need including new eSata connector for fast external peripherals, dual gigabyt LAN, 1394 firewire for digital camera video editing, plenty USB and SATA ports. I have not had issue with my RAM (OCZ brand) just the voltage in bios was incorectly detecting default 2.0v but the manufacturer states 2.1v so I manually adjusted it and set the timing as well (5-5-5-12)it runs with vista like a charm, when I was installed the OS I just installed LAN drivers first and left Vista find and download drivers for the rest of devices which was success. I was unable to make uGuru software work under Vista 64bit no matter how many times I have tried. But overal I matured with this board in one week and now it is running 405Mhz FSB (266original) rock solid with all default settings, I installed one additional small fan over 965 chip to keep it cool (few bucks in radioshack, but I pulled mine from old pentium 166 cooler). I CAN SAY NOW I AM IN ABIT FAN CLUB. I'm looking to get my hands on Abit uGuru front panel to make it more cool.HOWGH !
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Overall Rating
4 Star Review
Reviewed by: pb4uxplode
Updated:06-12-07
Duration of ownership:5 Days
Strengths: Overclocking features are very easy for the "non-enthusiest". Tons of SATA ports. Lots of nice features (temp monitoring, visual POST instead of annoying beeps, etc.).
Weaknesses: POST codes in the manual are basically useless. Placement of some ports are horrible.
Overall Evaluation: First getting the board set up was a little quirky. I purchased this board to build a brand new media center computer. E6600, 2g/b RAM, Hauppage HVR-1600, 320g/b SATA HD, DVD burner, Centurion 5 case, Vista Home Premium 64-bit. The first issue came when installing Vista. It required a reboot several times in order to install the O/S. Every time the board would reboot, it would get stuck on POST with an error code that wasn't in the book. I had to reset my BIOS every time I would reboot to get Windows fully installed. Even after install, it was still doing this. I entered the setup and realized what the problem was. It defaults to setting up the floppy as the primary boot drive. If you don't have a floppy hooked up, you can bet your board won't make it through POST. The placement of ports such as the IDE port are also very awkward. I couldn't put my DVD burner in the top port on my case because the cord wasn't long enough. The IDE port is all the way at the bottom of the board, and most drives look best positioned at the top of the case. Mine looks strange as I had to put the drive in the middle of the case. I used a Centurion 5, which is a mid-tower. The other locations are rather poorly placed as well. It is a large mess of wires and there is really no way to make it visually appealing. The board itself looks great, but once everything is hooked up I wish I got the case without the window. I know these negatives seem rather harsh, but I wanted to give an accurate description of the board. However, I do think it is a great product. Once you get everything working, the functionality of the board is great. You can't beat the price of this board when it comes to included features.
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Overall Rating
4 Star Review
Reviewed by: WhoBeDaPlaya
Updated:05-17-07
Duration of ownership:8 Days
Strengths: Wealth of SATA connectorsPassive northbridge coolingSensible PCI-E 16x slot placementIEEE-1394A w/internal headersDual Gigabit ethernetuGuru
Weaknesses: JMicron IDE controllerSingle IDE channelInconvenient IDE and floppy header placement
Overall Evaluation: Purchased this board for a new fileserver build, which required around 16 SATA ports. Rather than blowing the cash on an expensive 16-port controller (don't need hardware RAID capabilities, only JBOD), I figured that my money would be better spent on the AB9 Pro and a SuperMicro AOC-SAT2-MV8 (which runs fine in 32-bit mode on this motherboard). Paired with 15 750GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 SATA drives, LiteOn SOHW-832S and 400GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 IDE drive; XFX GeForce 8500GT, Happauge WinTV PVR-500MCE, Core 2 E4300 and 2x 1GB DDR2-667 SuperTalent memory. Updated the BIOS immediately and this system has treated me well right from the get go. Instant overclock to 333FSB (3.06GHz CPU speed, 1:1 RAM divider) so I'm one very happy camper. It does suffer from the usual Intel 965 chipset idiosyncracies (short power down and up after critical BIOS changes, etc.) but I don't hold this against ABIT.
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Overall Rating
3 Star Review
Reviewed by: Buckyboy85
Updated:04-21-07
Duration of ownership:
Strengths: Greats Specs, plenty of slots, reasonable price.
Weaknesses: Not Vista compatible (yet.. they have not released drivers for vista) and it was a pain to get working properly.
Overall Evaluation: I used this motherboard to build my latest cpu. When I put in the CD to install the drivers it turned out it wasn't Vista compatible. I looked online and couldn't find any, so I just installed the XP drivers and it seemed to work fine, but every once in a while it would crash or start beeping. I had to call them up and they said a lot of people had the same problem... and that they would give me directions on what to do.After everything has been fixed, which was a huge pain, it turned out to be really great. It's has plenty of slots for it's price.
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Overall Rating
1 Star Review
Reviewed by:
Updated:12-16-06
Duration of ownership:4 Months
Strengths: Very little
Weaknesses: Purchased this board which operated for 4 months and then failed. Could not get through POST sequence. Sent bord back to ABIT and received replacement which was no better.
Overall Evaluation: I purchased an Intel DG965WH board, installed the same CPU & Memory and was back in business which proved that the problem was in the ABit MOBO. I would never buy another Abit board after this costly experience.
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Overall Rating
4 Star Review
Reviewed by: kwong5773
Updated:09-30-06
Duration of ownership:20 Days
Strengths: The MGuru software set up in the bios is excellent. Flashing and Overclocking "on the fly" while in an OS - awesome. Very good price with many features on it.
Weaknesses: Having problem Installation of Windows XP, need to hit F6 to install SATA RAID drivers even I?m using IDE hard Drive. No intrusion connector from MOBO for my case INT Switch.
Overall Evaluation: Overall, this MOBO is value for money, with P965 & ICH8R chipset from Intel - new Fast Memory Access technology, 1066MHz front side bus support, 800MHz DDR-2 memory support, and full support for the new Core 2 Duo processor lineup & 9 Int + 1 Ext SATA drives. It give you no reason to reject this MOBO. The BIOS is still very new, need to wait for a better one. IDE coonector layer out is kind of far, need to find a longer IDE cable. It is a good buy, but you need to study more from peoples experience for smooth setup!
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Overall Rating
4 Star Review
Reviewed by:
Updated:09-25-06
Duration of ownership:2 Weeks
Strengths: Good price for a strong board with Core2 Duo support. After the initial quirks, it's smooth as silk.
Weaknesses: Quirky drivers and BIOS setup. Schizoid cabling layout. Definitely NOT for those who appreciate case interior aesthetics.
Overall Evaluation: I thought we had to re-time the RAM, and we did that. It didn't help, at all. But the problem for my build was in the JMicron and Silicon Image setups. Once I disabled those two controllers, everythin
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Overall Rating
1 Star Review
Reviewed by: geo442
Updated:09-08-06
Duration of ownership:
Strengths: Heatsink type/location.
Weaknesses: Horrible memory compatibility (we're talking beta-test here), connector layout, overall layout, customer support/service.
Overall Evaluation: I bought this board bundled with an E6600 processor, solely on my past, positive experiences with ABIT motherboards, and I really and truly regret it. I remember when ABIT created a quality enthusiast's motherboard and back the product up. Those days, alas, are gone. After the headache of running the accessory cables to the strange and distant place this board puts them, I went to boot up. It halted in POST with a memory error. After snooping out ABIT's forums, it becomes clear that this board generally doesn't work well with DDR2-800 of any type and specifically the dislike for OCZ products is total. The solution offered to my board not being able to POST? Well, I should go and buy the cheapest DDR2-533 I could find that ran at 1.8v so that I could get a POST and flash the latest BIOS (v1.4). With the newest BIOS, I could then run my OCZ Platinum DDR2-800 at the max speed of DDR2-667. That was it for me -- the manufacturer advertised compatibility with DDR2-800, which is at best incomplete with version 1.4 of the BIOS. This is not a product I'm going to continue fighting with. And as their official response as to how to get posting was "run out and buy some cheap RAM", well, that's not a company with the kind of support policy I wish to ever patronize again.
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Overall Rating
3 Star Review
Reviewed by:
Updated:08-25-06
Duration of ownership:3 Days
Strengths: Onboard sound has Dolby, many SATA ports.
Weaknesses: Latest bios, 1.3, is still buggy, lot of incompatability with memory modules.
Overall Evaluation: Took about 24hours to get this board up and stable.Start out with 1 stick of ram, enter bios, loosen timings, makes sure you have proper voltages for ram. My 4-4-4-12 ram required 5-5-5-14 to post with additional 0.1VDC to ram and 0.1 VDC to MCH, after all was stable, able to run my Conroe E6600 @ 300FSB, reporting as a 3.0Ghz processor.Make sure you F6 and add all additional drivers from the 3 floppy disks, if 32-bit install, [different for 64-bit]for windows xp load.Also, if you have USB devices, you might have to disable floppy and 1394 support after you load windows, my particular install would allow only 3 USB devices or would not post and would revert all my settings and had to pull 2 sticks of ram out, clear cmos, and start from scratch.Hopefully, ABIT will release further bios revisions to clear up all the troubles with this board. Look to ABIT forums for further information. Good Luck...
