Board Layout

The layout of the AK35 is not much different than the AK31. The northbridge and southbridge chips are in the same position. The fan on the northbridge should only cause a problem for extremely large HSF's. Shuttle has moved to a smaller BIOS chip to spare some room for the added Highpoint controller and IDE connectors. The CNR slot has also been removed, which I like. I don't understand what use those "all in one" slots have other than looking ugly taking up space. Some other minor changes have been made to add the C-Media audio headers and the like. You will also notice that there is a moved fan header to the right of the AGP slot. This was a good adjustment from the AK31 which had this header clear on the other side of the board making it a far reach for a front case fan. Overall, the layout works quite well and didn't cause me any problems.



Why Linux?

Why not? Shuttle has a good PR department and they get their boards into a large number of reviewers' hands. I figured that with so many reviews of this board published, I wouldn't be adding any new information with my limited assortment of comparison boards. Since I run a relatively small review site, my current review boards are limited to a few KT133A's and the Shuttle AK31. A comparison to the AK31 would yield almost identical results, with the exception of harddive (RAID) performance, and a comparison to the KT133A would be pointless. This article instead focusses on the installation, compatibilty and performance under Linux 2.4.18. The benchmarks will leave us with an index for future reviews as well as give you an idea as to whether the board makes a good choice for a Linux Box. So, with that said, let's get on with it.