ASRock K7VM2

The ASRock K7VM2 seems to be a good performer but it's been very frustrating to deal with the problem of not being able to update XP with the latest patches. I don't want to replace the board because it's been such a good performer (reliability & Speed)... it would be like getting rid of a good car because you can't put 20 inch wheels on it.

I resurrected this board after it had been thrown away by my son. He had had problems with it randomly restarting. He was convinced it was either a mother board problem, an HDD problem or the PSU. Eliminating the HDD and PSU was easy leaving the mother board or processor. He bought another Asrock board and that was OK with his processor. Fortunately the memory wasn't suitable for the new motherboard.

Anyway I had his old memory, his motherboard and bought a second user processor (AMD 2 GHz) and a new case/PSU. After a lot of head banging I found the fault. With the two memory sticks in RAM it fell over frequently, failed to start properly etc. etc. Eventually I removed the 256 MB stick, just leaving the 512 Mb stick. Now it works fine except for the VDU o/p (My son always used an AGP card as it was better for gaming.) Now everything is OK I'll invest in a better graphics card.

I use the ASRock K7VM2 motherboard in one of my portal servers. It's up 24/7 with hundreds of thousands of hits a day. No matter what happens, this board keeps running!

With the great bus speed, it is very handy for using with 2D applications and for playing music. I find the sound of the AC'97 sound card really of astonishing beauty!

Oh, and don't forget the 4 USB 2.0 ports, which can even be expanded to 6 of them!

I used this board in a gaming PC for a while, but the 4x AGP speed lacks for this kind of use. It is however, a good all rounder.

I am writing this as I am currently having loads of problems with my ASRock K7VM2 Motherboard. I have a USB2 running under Windows 98SE, and the PC crashes intermittently whenever I insert my USB2 pen drive. It is very frustrating.

For a budget board this is great,4xUSB,SDR-DDR,USBx2,GFX may not be so hot , what with the savage chipset but i use GF3-TI-500-128MB and that does me fine (and is a great overclocker-with an updated Bios)

For a budget motherboard this Asrock K7 VM2 is great, 4xUSB, SDR-DDR, USBx2,GFX may not be so hot , what with the savage chipset but i use GF3-TI-500-128MB and that does me fine (and is a great overclocker-with an updated Bios)

The Board quality of the Asrock k7 vm2 did not meet expectations in the end with one of the the two Motherboards failing within 10 months of purchase.

I won't be back for another.

Cheap, but don't expect support. I had no sound and the first and only reply they would send was wipe your hard-drive and reinstall the OS.

I couldnt believe the price for Asrock k7 vm2 motherboard with so many onboard features. It has everything you need for a simple workstation, including onboard video, sound, NIC and USB 2.0. The only down point is its simple bios which doesnt give you many options for overclocking.

This Asrock k7 vm2 motherboard was a bargain at £49-00 from the local computer fair. Asrock is part of ASUS corporation and therefore quality in manufacturing can be taken for granted. With the board I have, there is onboard sound AC97 and a 32 meg savage 4 chipset as well; admittedly for gaming the graphics card is a bit slow by todays new standards; but for free it's ok. There is a 4x AGP slot for upgrading and as an extra bonus you get 4x usb 2 ports as well !

The board had none of the cheapness or flimsiness

associated with some of the cheaper brands, in fact it looked and felt like a board twice it's price. it has 2 udma 133 connectors and will support a 2600 XP chip as well as 2 sticks of DDR Pc 2100/2600 or 2 sticks of Pc 100/133 ram.

I am very impressed with the board and run it with 512 meg of 2600 DDR ram and a geforce 3ti 500 and an soundblaster Audigy card. The only let down is the poor manual, it is sparten at best and to be frank they could have made more of an effort with this. There is an AMR slot for a cheap modem and as far as I can tell bios upgrades are being written at the moment to support the faster DDR 2700 ram. I think this is a brilliant little board and am most pleased with my purchase.