The board has an intriguing exterior thanks to the slots and some connectors
matching with the textolite in color and a cooler made of semitransparent plastic
and illuminated with 3 LEDs. Also, the board sports a lot of integrated controllers.
That is why it can easily draw attention of many buyers.
Accessories:
- Package of the standard design in red and black colors;
-
Documentation: user manual in English;
- Cables: FDD, SATA, 2 ATA66/100/133;
-
Bracket for the rear computer panel;
- CD containing:
-
drivers;
- user guides for several Iwill boards in PDF;
-
several system monitoring utilities;
- Adobe Acrobat Reader;
-
McAfee VirusScan.
The layout has typical drawbacks: audio-ins are in front of the PCI, and the
IDE are behind them; it's not easy to deal with additional IDE connectors and
the ones located between the board's lower edge and memory modules, and when a
video card is installed it's difficult to handle the memory modules. It can be
difficult to reach some jumpers when the board is already installed. Their functions
are not shown on the textolite.
The 3-channel switching voltage regulator
incorporates 4 capacitors of 3300 uF and 12 of 1200 uF.
The following
controllers are integrated:
- audio controller based on the chipset's
capabilities and Avance Logic ALC650 AC'97 codec supporting 5.1 audio systems
and having connectors for front audio outputs;
- network controller
based on the Realtek RTL8100B chip supporting 10BaseT/100BaseTX;
- additional
IDE controller based on the Promise PDC20275 chip supporting 4 IDE devices on
ATA133 protocol;
- SATA RAID controller based on the Silicon Image
Sil3112ACT144 chip supporting RAID 0 and 1 on the SATA150 protocol
Thanks
to the Winbond W83637HF-AW Smart I/O controller the board supports (and have connectors)
SD/MS Card Readers.
Non-unsoldered connectors: none.
The system monitoring
is supported by the Winbond W83627HF-AW chip. What is controlled:
-
processor voltage, +3.3, +5 and +12 V, VBAT and +5 V Standby
- speed of
1 fans;
- temperatures of the processor (a built-in sensor).
There
are 2 connectors for adjustable and 1 for unadjustable connection of fans (connected
to a fan on the MCH's heatsink).
Brief characteristics of the board:
memory slots - 2 DDR SDRAM; expansion slots - AGP/ 5 PCI; I/O ports - 2 COM/ LPT/
2 PS/2/ 6 USB 2.0; dimensions - 305x210 mm.
Adjustment
can be carried out with:
| jumpers and switches |
Jumper to clear up the CMOS |
|
| Jumper for starting up computer from USB keyboard |
|
| BIOS based on Phoenix's Award WorkstationBIOS 6.00PG |
Setup of memory timings |
+ |
CAS Latency, Active to Precharge Delay, RAS to CAS Delay, RAS
Precharge, Turbo Mode |
| Setup of memory frequency |
+ |
Auto, DDR266, DDR333 |
| Setup of AGP bus |
- |
|
| Setup of PCI bus |
- |
|
| Changeable scaler of AGP and PCI buses |
+ |
PCI (AGP/2) = 33, 37, 44 MHz, FSB/2, FSB/3, FSB/4, FSB/5, FSB/6 |
| Manual assignment of interrupts |
+ |
|
| Changeable FSB frequency |
+ |
100-250 MHz in 1MHz steps |
| Changeable CPU multiplier |
+ |
x8-x50 |
| Changeable core voltage |
+ |
1.175-2.00 V in 0.025V steps up to 1.85V and in 0.05 V further |
| Changeable memory voltage |
+ |
Auto, 2.6, 2.7, 2.8, 2.9V |
| Changeable chipset voltage |
- |
|
| Changeable AGP bus voltage |
- |
|
We
used the BIOS of 07.11.2002 as the latest available version.
The board
has quite good parameters, and if it had a bit richer accessory pack, it could
be one of the most feature-laden solutions on the i845PE chipset. At the same
time, some of its shortcomings do not let me to recommend it for everyone out
there, that is why it remains a good solution for budget-concious people.
Test results:
