Maybe I've been living under a rock for the last few years, but I've honestly never heard of AZZA. After browsing through the company's North American web site, which doesn't even list the KT600 ALX, I wasn't too optimistic about the board's prospects. The fact that no listings for the KT600 ALX are available on Pricewatch doesn't say much for the board's current availability, either.

Still, I've always been a fan of underdogs. If anything, the KT600 ALX's black board suggests this could be the dark horse in our comparison, so I won't write it off just yet.

At first glance, nothing about the KT600 ALX really jumps out. The board has six PCI slots and lacks an auxiliary power connector, which makes it similar to the A7V600. However, the KT600 ALX's primary power connector is positioned far from the top edge of the board, so users will have to deal with a little power cord cable clutter.

The KT600 ALX's socket orientation makes heat sink removal in tight cases a bit difficult, but there's lots of room around the socket for larger heat sinks. The board also lacks mounting holes for beefier heat sink retention systems.

Despite having six PCI slots, there's enough room between the KT600 ALX's AGP and DIMM slots to swap memory modules without having to yank their graphics cards. Those with longer graphics cards (gargantuan GeForce4 Ti 4600s come to mind) may run into a few problems when fiddling with the DIMM slot retention tabs, but there are no clearance problems once everything is installed.

Surprisingly, the KT600 ALX is the first motherboard I've seen in ages that doesn't incorporate an AGP card retention system of any kind. Those who move their rigs to and from LAN parties on a regular basis or run heavier graphics cards should think twice about using the KT600 ALX without some sort of auxiliary AGP card retention mechanism.

AZZA's placement of the KT600 ALX's Serial ATA and IDE ports is similar ASUS' A7V600, which puts the ports mid-way up the board along one edge. Having the ports halfway up the board makes it easier to reach optical drives high up in full tower cases and also keeps cable clutter away from the bottom of the board.

The KT600 ALX uses a passive heat sink to keep its north bridge chip cool, which is just fine by me. Passive heat sinks may not have the sex appeal of funky fan-driven cooling systems, but with enough surface area, passive sinks get the job done nicely.

AZZA doesn't take any chances with the KT600 ALX's port cluster, which only gives access to two of the board's eight USB 2.0 ports. The remaining USB ports must be accessed via PCI back plate headers, but that blocks access to PCI slots. With only three analog audio ports, the KT600 ALX's center and rear outputs share ports with its line-in and microphone inputs.