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Introduction

I still remember buying my first Shuttle board. I cannot recall the model but it was one of the few boards with an AMD chipset on it. This is before the days of the Athlon, or K6-2 for that matter. It took up to a K6 233MHz which is what I installed in it. It was a great board for its day and I never had any major problems with it. While it was pretty "no frills", it got the job done. Well, the days of the K6 are over and we now have a new breed of mainboards on the market. Users are looking for reliable, well-performing, feature rich boards which can last a few processor upgrades. Does the Shuttle AK31 Rev. 3.1 have these qualities? Let's take a look.

Features

Shuttle AK31 Rev. 3.1 Features
Chipset	KT266A
Expansion Slots	1AGP-6PCI-1CNR
Memory	4 DDR DIMMs (200/266)
IDE Controller	ATA66 / ATA100
Sound	On-Board VIA AC97
USB	2 Onboard + 2 Headers
CPU Support	Duron, Athlon, AthlonXP

The major revision over the previous AK31 is the substitution of the KT266A for the KT266 chipset. As most of us know by now, the KT266 left a lot to be desired. Performance has been greatly increased with the new chipset. Other features include support for up to six USB ports. Though, you will have to purchase the dongles separately as they are optional. I like the fact that the board has 6 PCI slots. The CNR slot, as useless as it is, does not take the place of a PCI...definitely a good feature. You will also notice that the board supports 4GB of RAM, the maximum allowed by the chipset, with its four DIMM slots. However, I was unable to verify operation with this much RAM for obvious reasons (like a lack of four 1GB DIMMs).

Board Layout

The layout of the board has not changed since the first revision. It really isn't that bad of a layout but I would have preferred a fan header near the front of the case. There is a header near the back but it is buried by the PCI devices. This is also where the CD Audio and TAD connectors call home. I suppose that realty is scarce on the board and they are near the slots for a reason. But still, it is a bit inconvenient. The northbridge fan uses a standard 3-Pin connector which makes it a nice place to keep a Blue Orb or other small HSF. The two additional USB headers and the IR header are located to the right of the PCI slots. (click to enlarge).

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