Motherboard: Sono VK 2208 (Hawk) Review :: Introduction

Sono is the newest player in the motherboard game and they seem to be on the right track to providing low cost efficient boards to the masses.
I recently was contacted by Praneel (a young gentleman working in the Sono marketing department) about reviewing their new line of motherboards and I agreed to review them, being curious about their boards. I actually received two of the latest boards from Sono and they didn't look bad at all. In fact the blue PCB reminds me of Gigabytes line of motherboards.

These guys who started in May 1997 as a part of The Sono Group of Companies have a strange way of manufacturing and designing their products. I believe that this is the only motherboard company in the world that has their products assembled in Poland. I hear the jokes coming from all directions but Poland has always been a very industrial country and the Sono line of boards although new, shows promise for this small Canadian company that is an ISO-9002 approved manufacturer. The R&D is all done in Taiwan like all the top companies so you know they are not slacking in that department.

Both motherboards received were based on different aspects of the VIA KT133 chipset. One board the 2208 was based on the older KT133 and the other the 2208A on the newer KT133A chipset from VIA. Sono has a big hill to climb as it has entered one of the most dog eat dog avenues of manufacturing and marketing in existence today and the competition is fierce in this market. We take a look at the older 133 based chipset board first and ran it through our series of tests to see how well it can perform under pressure. To get all the details of this new company's board read on and see the whole review.

The VK 2208 hawk motherboard rolling off the assembly line at the Poland factory.