The IDE/Floppy connectors aren't in the greatest
position in my opinion, but then again the need to use full length cards
isn't much of a necessity for most of us, so I'm being a little
picky here. With no mounting holes around the CPU socket installation of
larger heatsinks like the ones from Swiftech or Zalman are impossible. Clip based socket A heatsinks
should be okay as long as they are not too large.
If you are
unsure about a particular heatsink here are the standoff dimensions relative to
the image below. From the top of the socket to the capacitors there is roughly 6mm
of space, from the bottom of the socket about the same, 6mm. To the left and right the board gives us at least 15mm
worth of clearance. Basically, any heatsink under 75mm in length (in the clip
direction) will be a tight fit, but fine. And hey, they even have a thermistor
in the center of the socket for thermal monitoring.
ACorp has
done a pretty good job with this value board, and the biggest upside for
the 7KT266A of course is price. Expect to find the 7KT266A retailing for
about USD$90 ($130 CDN). With that in mind, you can be a bit forgiving about the limited amount of overclocking features, because after all
it is the cheapest KT266A based board out there we have yet to
see!
I think if ACorp can bring the 7KT266A out en
masse, they should do very well. While most of us would love to get the most
feature-packed motherboard on the market with all the bells and whistles, there
is still a lot of shopping by price alone, so if you have a small budget and
don't intend to do a lot of overclocking or extensive tweaking this board could
be a good option to consider.