Posted: October 1st, 2001
Written by: Tuan Huynh

Shuttle AK31 v2

Shuttle Computers is no stranger to the motherboard market, they were well known for their old “HOT” series of motherboards. They are also known as Spacewalker in Taiwan.

When Shuttle released the AK31 v1, they were greeted with the same performance problems MSI faced. Rather then just replacing the resistor like MSI, Shuttle reengineered the board changing the traces to the northbridge as well as resistors. After they finished reengineering the board, the AK31 v2 was born. The AK31 v2 was Shuttle’s big reentry back into the enthusiast market.

Sporting VIA’s KT266 DDR chipset, the AK31 v2 has 1 AGP, 6 PCI, and 1 CNR for expansion-card slot load-out. Unlike the others, the K7S5A and M7VIB, Shuttle included an AGP retention mechanism on the AGP4x slot. The AGP retention mechanism is used to secure an AGP video card so it doesn’t become loose or fallout. Since the Shuttle board doesn’t have an ACR slot, there are 6 PCI slots total for your expansion pleasure. For memory expansion, Shuttle offers 4 DDR DIMM slots for a total capacity of 4GB of ram.

For connectors, we see the standard ATX connectors on the backside with onboard sound as well. Like the other boards, the onboard sound is just VIA AC’97, so nothing fancy like C-Media. For USB, there are 2 connectors onboard with the option to add 4 more USB ports. The evaluation version that I had didn’t come with the extra USB headers, but it seems the retail version include an extra USB header. The power connector is located behind the ports, which are in a convenient place, since it doesn’t interfere with any of the cables or your HSF on the CPU.

Out of all three boards, the Shuttle has the best and most complete manual. The manual covers all features of the boards, and is almost near the likes of Asus and Abit. If you’re a newbie and want full instructions, the Shuttle AK31 v2 will be your best bet.

Bios

Using an Award 6.0 BIOS, the AK31 v2 offers the most BIOS features found compared to the other boards in this roundup. The AK31 v2 features the same memory timing settings found on the M7VIB.

For overclockers, the AK31 v2 doesn’t skimp on overclocking features at all. The AK31 v2 offers pretty much all the overclocking features you need. With the AK31 v2, you can change the CPU core voltage, set the clock multiplier, set the DDR voltage, and change the FSB frequency. Unlike the K7S5A and M7VIB, with their limited FSB settings, the AK31 v2 allows you to increase the FSB in increments of 1 MHz from 100 MHz to 166 MHz!

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