Motherboard: Shuttle AK31A V3.1 Review :: Installation

Nothing out of the ordinary is worth mentioning here as the BIOS automatically will detect the CPU, memory and peripherals if everything is hooked up correctly. Everything else is accomplished within the AWARD BIOS. You can get into the BIOS by hitting the Del key on your keyboard after the systems initial posting (When you see a screen) this will take you into the system BIOS which will look like the graph below.

There really is not much else to go over as far as simple installation is concerned; the board is really quite easy to work with in an all around kind of way. If you want to hanker around with the CPU the Frequency/Voltage Control is where you want to be in the BIOS as you can see in the above graph it is located in the top right hand side of the BIOS screen. As you can see all the options for adjusting the CPU are located in this segment of the BIOS. These features are very easy to use and get stable results without requiring too much tinkering.

I did however get to use some cool new gadgets like the new memory cooling kit from Thermaltake which can actually cool two sticks of memory with its attached fan. I bent the little bugger to blow air more directly at my single 256MB stick of PC2400 DDR SDRAM. The Swiftech fan was also a very cool object that is so easy to work with, so easy you question if you did it right the first time. The clips on it are really outstanding and simple to attach and adjust.

One thing was the lack of lawnmower like sounds coming out of your computer that usually comes hand in hand when using 7200RPM fans but the Swiftech product was very quite all things considering, it makes noise just bearable noise. If you have built a system before all this is all old news to you if you are new to building your own read this first and you should do just fine. Let us move on to the gravy of the AK31, the performance section of this review. Can this baby cook? Read on.