MSI K9A2 CF

Rear I/O

Bare is the very essence of the rear I/O on the K9A2 CF. There’s just the following included:

• PS/2 Keyboard and Mouse
  
• One RS232 Serial port
  
• Four USB 2.0 ports
  
• One RJ45 Ethernet socket
  
• Six 3.5mm analogue audio jacks

Yes, the basics are included, but I would’ve really liked to have seen a couple of those unused USB ports relocated back here – then it would be pretty much ideal.

There are no S/PDIF connectors here, but there is a 2-pin header at the very bottom of the board that acts as a pass through for current Nvidia graphics cards. As it stands, you get what you need and that’s that – it’s entirely expected given the board’s price.

BIOS

The BIOS is surprisingly well rounded – there are plenty of memory timings and all the necessary frequency adjustments are included as well. The 1,066MHz memory divider is only available when a Phenom is used, as you'd expect with the memory controller being a part of the CPU and not the chipset.

The only disappointment comes from the voltage adjustments, as there is a very limited choice available. And for those that are available, there are only large increments. For example, a memory jump from say 2.2V to 2.3V is quite significant, as are the four or five jumps in CPU voltage (the actual values available are dependent on what CPU you use – 90nm Windsor, 65nm Brisbane, 65nm Agena, etc).

Despite this being a pretty cheap motherboard, MSI still includes the D.O.T. overclocking control for those that want the system to manage itself. However, given the limited overhead on 90nm Athlon 64 X2s and Phenom CPUs we’ve seen so far, we'd highly encourage doing it yourself.