AOpen AK72 Motherboard Athlon Slot A Via KX133

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 The AOpen AK72 mainboard is a very decent SLOT-A motherboard and will run almost any SLOT-A Athlon CPU you put in it. Starting with the very first Pluto CPUs as well as the Orion Athlon CPUs and of course the Thunderbird.

Another feature is that is works with 1.5GB of memory, which can be ECC memory too, if you like. This is a great advantage because SD-RAM back in the day was not comparable to modern DDR4 or 5 memory modules. Memory errors were the primary cause for crashes beside sketchy chipsets or AGP implementations. The board supports 1.5GB of memory which is double the amount of most other mainboards.    

All three features, large RAM support, ECC support and good AGP support are very well done with the AK72. The Via KX133 chipset is a very solid, stable and good performing choice. It is faster than AMDs irongate and brings features to the table other chipsets never had to begin with. These and the fact that the AK72 has very modern I/O ports for it´s time along with a robust power stabilisation makes it the perfect choice for a Windows retro gaming system.

A Voodoo 5 5500 AGP graphics card, or a simple Riva128 along with one or two Voodoo 2 cards (see my other offers) are a decent choice for this board.

Since it has no onboard sound (and who would want that anyway) you should add a soundcard too. Maybe a Creative Soundblaster X-Fi PCI on the one end or, if you want to go the retro way, you may use a MediaVision Pro Audio Spectrum 16 ISA card. After all it has an ISA slot to do just this (or install other ISA cards).

You may find all mentioned parts (like Voodoo, Soundblaster etc.) in my other offers. If you buy more than one item, drop me a message first if you like and I will cut you a good deal here on ebay.      

 

 

 

 

The AOpen AK72 mainboard is used but in good condition. The newest BIOS is installed.

 

 

 

 

                                             



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