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Gigabyte K8NSC

AMD Athlon 64 socket 939
NForce 3 250Gb
AGP / PCI

There are several interesting and not-so-interesting about this board. First things first, the good news

S-ATA and IDE RAID

Since it's uses the NForce 3 250 Gb chipset, K8NSC retains the features found in this chipset. The K8NSC is equipped with both S-ATA and IDE RAID. Instead of buying two S-ATA drives, you could just buy another IDE drive identical to the one you have and use them both in a RAID IDE array. Now you have increased storage performance without spending more than you have to for 2 S-ATA drives.

Expansions and Add-Ons

As peripherals go, K8NSC can fulfill some of your needs. By default, there's 4 USB ports and Gigabit LAN. For legacy purposes, there's still PS/2 connectors for your mouse and keyboard, 2 COM / serial ports and 1 LPT / printer port. The K8NSC uses the standard AC97 codec from Avance Logic, so sound quality is good enough for watching movies and listening to music.

Like most socket 939 AGP equipped boards, the K8NSC comes with 1 AGP slot and 5 PCI slots. All socket 939 boards, whether PCI Express or AGP / PCI, comes with 4 DIMM slots for DDR memory modules and the K8NSC is no exception. If you're using old, PCI dinosaurs add-on cards that have some compatibility problems with Plug n Play, you can set a slot to exclusively use a certain IRQ and of course set the PCI Timer as low or as high as you like.

Tweaking and Overclocking Friendly

For those who want manual adjustment settings, many overclocking and tweaking options are available. These hidden settings can be accessed by pressing 'Ctrl' and 'F1' key at the same time on the main BIOS menu. Processor, AGP, chipset, memory voltage settings can be automatically set or manually adjusted. You can also set the multiplier for your processor and adjust the FSB. The obligatory memory timing adjustments are also available and quite a lot too. On the PC Health menu, you can view statistics such as voltages, fan speeds and temperatures.

Since NForce3 is a single chip design, you only have one chip for both northbridge and southbridge. This chip is actively cooled on the K8NSC, so there shouldn't be any stability issues due to heat. While the position of the chipset with the fan / heatsink seems worrisome, it's not - the height is just enough so it won't obstruct full length AGP and PCI add-on cards.

Gigabyte uses color coding to great effect, most of the connectors and headers are colored - only the audio in headers are not. This should make installation easier. If you're a long time supporter of Gigabyte, you'll be happy to know that they now supply jumper headers for clearing the CMOS - no more contact points!

There are minor gripes with this board. But they are minor and if you can live with them, you have a really good board on your hands. The bad news:

• Most settings for tweaking and manually adjusting the motherboard is hidden. Like we said earlier, you have to press the 'Ctrl' and 'F1' key together in the main BIOS screen to access them. This information is not present in the manual.
• The voltage monitoring doesn't display the nominal value of each rails. K8NSC simply displays 'OK' if your power supply rails is still within tolerable limits. You can only view the values through their V-Tuner Utility or other hardware monitoring software.
• Apparently, Gigabyte thinks that everyone buying their motherboard have another PC. You need to make your own S-ATA driver disk before installing Windows XP. You can use the utility in the driver CD to make this disk, but this does complicate installation - especially if you don't have another PC.
• The location of some connectors and headers can cause installation and airflow problems. For example, both S-ATA connectors are located on the side of the AGP slot. The audio connectors are also placed near the back of the AGP slot.
• K8NSC only feature 3 fan headers and two of them are reserved for the processor and the chipset fans. If you have any other fans, you will most likely have to connect them directly to the PSU. So, only one other fan can be monitored.
• There are only 4 USB ports in the back of the motherboard. You have to find your own ports for the two other USB headers. The same thing applies to S-ATA cables, the K8NSC only comes with one cable. Gigabyte also doesn't supply S-ATA power connectors, so make sure you get one before using a S-ATA hard drive (if your power supply doesn't have any).

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