Review: EQS AB1S-RS690MKM motherboard

The AB1S-RS690MKM is a Micro ATX format motherboard built around AMD's Socket AM2 and RS690G chipset, the company's first integrated graphics platform.

It supports AMD's Athlon 64, 64FX and 64 X2 ranges of processors with a 1GHz Hyper-Transport bus. Due to the compact nature of the board thereís not much room around the components.

This isn't too much of a problem, however the locking latches on the four Dimm slots may get blocked by any large-sized graphics card. The lack of space around the CPU socket also limits choice when it comes to a third-party processor cooler.

Both the AMD 690G and SB600 bridges are passively cooled, which keeps motherboard noise to a minimum.

Apart from the graphics slot you get a single x1 PCI Express slot and a couple of PCI slots for expansion purposes. This may not sound much, but the board does come with integrated eight-channel audio and Gigabit Ethernet as standard. You get four Sata2 ports, all of which are mounted on the bottom edge of the board. Also edge-mounted, but on the right-hand side, are the ATX power connector and the single ATA-133 port.

The 690G provides integrated graphics in the form of 400MHz clocked Radeon Xpress 1250 core - a DirectX 9 component which offers limited gaming potential but, more importantly, it features support for integrated HDMI (supporting HDCP) and DVI outputs. For the AB1S-RS690MKM, EQS has chosen to combine the HDMI with a standard VGA port.

Aside from the aforementioned VGA and HDMI ports, the back I/O panel holds two PS/2 ports, a parallel port, four USB2 sockets, Gigabit Lan and six audio ports. The cramped design limits the boardís upgrade potential, but with HDMI support it's well-priced.