How to Install the Abit KX7-333/KX7-333R Motherboard
Last updated: 1/18/2004

Setup the CMOS.

54. Boot-up the Computer. You may see a CMOS checksum error. Ignore it. Enter the CMOS Setup by pressing the Delete key when prompted.

55. Select Load Optimized Defaults and press the Enter key.

56. Check the CPU settings again.

57. Enter the Standard CMOS Features and set the correct date and time and Esc to the Main Menu.

I also change the settings for drives not installed to "none" and leave the others set to "Auto."

58. Enter the Integrated Peripherals Setup, Super IO Device and disable Onboard Serial Ports 1 and 2. This computer does not use either serial port. Disabling both ports frees-up IRQs for other devices.

59. You may want to change the parallel port settings to conform to your printer. The ECP/EPP setting works with most recent printers.

60. If you are not going to use USB, disable that as well. If you disable it, also disable Assign IRQ for USB in the PNP/PCI Configurations Menu.

61. If you have the RAID version of the motherboard and you are not going to use the RAID IDE interfaces, disable the controller.

62. Esc to the Maine Menu, and select Save & Exit the CMOS Setup and press the Enter key. The remaining CMOS default values are ok for this computer.

63. Build-up the rest of the computer per How to Build a Computer with an AMD Socket A Athlon or Duron Processor.

64. Install the USB cable and header supplied with the motherboard. Plug the cable into the USB2 port on the back of the motherboard. The red wires go towards pin 1 (red in the picture to the right). See the picture at the end of this article for one that has been installed. I would not activate more USB controllers than needed for the USB devices to be plugged into the computer. They use interrupts.

65. It's up to you whether or not you download and install the 4-in-1 drivers from VIA's web site. I didn't for this motherboard for Windows Me, XP, and 2000. My philosophy is if it ain't broke, don't fix it. My experience shows that the VIA drivers usually don't fix anything or make it faster if you have a fairly recent motherboard and are using an up-to-date version of Windows 98, 98SE, Me, 2000, or XP. The drivers can, but not usually, break things, however.

A computer (mine) built with this motherboard and housed in an Antec SX840 case is shown to the right with three hard disk drives. Two of them are 80 Gbyte Western Digital Special Edition ATA/100 hard disks in a RAID configuration. Lightning fast... See the review of the Western Digital Special Edition Caviar Hard Disk Drives for the benchmarks.

The step-by-step instructions for the RAID installation for this motherboad are in
RAIDing Windows XP: How to Install Windows XP on a RAID Array of Hard Disk Drives.

Larry

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