HOT!!! Abit KG7RAID mobo $59.00 ($49.00 w/coupon!!!) at Compgeeks!

[CoolMint]

Originally posted by: Devistater<br
The power switches have been "software" controlled ever since the AT style went out. Try holding the button down for 4 or so seconds, it should go off then 🙂

Just a few general suggestions, only put in a vid card and CPU and memory, see what happens. Also, double check on the mobo tray, make sure there's nothing hanging out from the underside of the mobo thats touching it. Once in a great many motherboards you'll get a piece of solder thats too long and touches the tray.

thanx but if you notice on the post right above yours i found the problem. for some reason the ram likes to come out of the socket no matter how hard
i pushed it in..but it seems fine now...i can boot up (using it now)

only problem still is i cant reboot..if i go into bios and then leave it.. the auto rebooting doesnt actually boot up
like someone else it just lights up and the fans come on but nothing else..i have to actually power down then power back up..pretty annoying
does the same thing on any reboot.

 

[Pul54r]

 

[samgoody69]

FYI

Looks like abit has boot problem on their mobo. I used to have a Abit BE6-II, If I shut the system down, I have to wait for few min before I can boot it back up again. If not, there is just no vide signal. Pretty annoying. But once it is up, pretty stable mobo.

 

[Pul54r]

Sorry for the double post, but I thought I would answer your questions:

1. Because this utilizies the VIA 686 B southbridge, you still need the 4 in 1's. The people who claim you don't are using windows XP which has the 4 in 1's installed already.

2. You will want the AMD AGP driver, NOT the VIA one (from the AMD website).

3. This board still experiences the crackle due to a pci design error. Some people have it, some don't, and it usually only happens with soundblaster cards. I'm using a hercules gametheater xp after my live 5.1 crackled to hell and back.

4. If you insert an athlon (I used an 1800+) the board WILL STILL BOOT, it will just boot way way underclocked. YOu can manually define the settings to run the chip, or just flash to a newer bios. The "W" version of the bios is by far the most stable, but the "E" version will let you run the ram at a faster setting.

5. The board is a very solid overclocker, but can only run 1.85 volts. Up to 143 - 144 FSB you will be hunky dory. Going over that is at your own risk. The AGP slot is 4x max.

6. Paul's unofficial ABIT page will answer the rest of your questions.

 

[Branded]

The 2nd best part about jumping on one of these AT bandwagons and buying the same mobo that everyone else bought is the support. Lots of nice information is shared. The best part is the price of course.

Here is a the abit bios link, and it does support the new thoroughbred cpus.



Abit bios

 

[flood]

ugh
need to decide between this and the shuttle ak31a

 

[LurkingInNC]

Anybody have an idea as to how the KG7 would compare to a decent via KT333 board (with pc2100 memory) performance wise?

I'm trying to weigh the cost/ features of the KG7 versus potential performance boost of a board using the via KT333 chipset. Building my first system, just gonna stick in a Duron 1.1 for now, upgrade the cpu later.

a couple of options I'm considering:
$70: KG7 ($50+$20 for a usb2.0 card)
OR
$82: Gigabyte GA-7VRX (no lan or raid)
OR
$111: Gigabyte GA-7VRXP

can't foresee a real need for lan or raid in the near future, but of course if things change adding them later would be more costly....

Thanks for any input!

 

[yddadnarg]

I've been having problems with this mobo since I got it too(I'm not saying to stay away though, I don't think any one person experiences is enough reason to stay from a mobo). I don't know what's wrong, although my best guess is a bad memory slot(which sucks cause it's the one I have to put the ram in). I hooked everything up the first time and booted but I put the ram in slot #1 when it has to go in slot#4, so it booted to the ramcheck phase (detected my athlon 950 fine and even said I had 256 megs of ram) before it gave me an error saying it must go into the correct slot. I took out the ram, put it in slot #4 and when I rebooted now, I was greated with a loud beeping sound and nothing else. All the fans started and the harddrive started spinning, but no screen and just the beeping. I had to hold down the power buttong for 5 seconds in order to turn it off. So I took the ram out and put it into slot #3 just to see what would happen and again, it booted up fine to the ramcheck phase, it showed my cpu speed correctly and detected the 256 megs of ram but told me I had to put it in the correct slot. I took it back out put it back into slot #4 and once again it wouldn't boot, or even start to. I'm not sure what to do, I'm currently trying to find my compgeeks customer id number so I can send it back. I've tried 2 sticks of crucial ram so I'm pretty sure that's not it. If anyone finds an answer to this problem let me know cause I hate having to send crap back. Thanks, -yddadnarg

 

[MAYAN]

All the fans started and the harddrive started spinning, but no screen and just the beeping.

That beeping sound is because the memory is not been recognized by the motherboard, either your memory slot is not working right or you didn't push the memory hard enough (it happened to me a couple times and I was 100% sure I put it right) try that and see if you get lucky!

Hope it helps!

 

[CoolMint]

yddadnarg

thats the exact same problem i had.. just get a good grip on the underside of the board and push that memory in hard..
i thought i was gonna break it.. heard some grinding sounds but it finally snapped and i am able to boot
good luck on getting it to REboot though.. i always have to shut off the power

 

[Bob/NYC]

My 2 retail KG7 boards bought last year came in lime green
boxes and still work sweet! These black/red look like they've
been to rehab.

 

[yddadnarg]

Hmm, thx guys(and gals if applicable) maybe I'll give it another try. I have installed DDR ram quite a few times so I know what it should look like and it seems like it's been all the way in there everytime. It's also weird that it seemed to work fine on the other slots(except for telling me the ram is in the wrong slot), just in slot 4 would it cause the beeping. Maybe I'll take my mobo out again and try to push the ram in super hard, I just don't want to break either the mobo or the ram. There is a point where it's just not worth breaking either and it's better to return it while the returning's good. I guess I'll give it one more shot, then test out compgeeks customer service. Thanks for the quick responses and help! -y

 

[hawkeye177]

One more note.
This Mobo has 4dimm slots BUT in order to use em all you have to get registered memory. Only 2 dimms work with unregistered mem.

So if you are going to use this board with unregistered mem think that the mobo only has 2 dimms slots.

 

[maxam]

Originally posted by: Bob/NYC
My 2 retail KG7 boards bought last year came in lime green
boxes and still work sweet! These black/red look like they've
been to rehab.

Now all the new boards are shipped like this. I think the new design might have something to do with the World Cup.

 

[slycat]

mine were black/red.
arrived and installed over weekend.
runs fast and all well.

1600+ xp
256 crucial ddr
GF2mx400 vivo
kg7-raid
sblive
3com 10/100
dvdrom
12x cdrw
winxp(no additional drivers were installed)

 

[slycat]

Originally posted by: mdcrab
The flashing of the BIOS is done from a 3 1/2 " boot disk. I don't think I have ever seen a mobo flashed from C:.
A good source for boot disks is:
bootdisk.com

mdcrab

haha..i always flash from C: or D:...just boot to DOS with a regular bootdisk and run the flash file from yer harddrive...
just make sure u got it on a FAT partition.

 

[slycat]

Originally posted by: im2smrt4u
While we are on the subject of bum KG7-RAID boards, maybe someone can help me out...

I have a KG7-RAID with a 1.33GHz Athlon. When I power up it boots fine a few times, but then, after a few boots, it quits booting. The LEDs come on and the fans spin, but no video, no beeps, and no boot.

Then I reset the CMOS and it works again, but now it doesn't always work...I have RMAed the board to Abit twice, and AFAIK they have replaced it both times, but I still get the same trouble...

Maybe I should jump on this deal and sacrifice the old one to eBay.

reassemble the board and test again. another thing is i had these exact same symtoms once and when i tested it...it was a hard disk pending failure...just a note that other peripherals can cause mobo-like errors...

 

[slycat]

Originally posted by: wshtb

Originally posted by: Delbert
What happens if you disconnect EVERYTHING except the CPU and RAM. Still .5 seconds of power-up?
Also try removing it from the case and setting it on a piece of cardboard or something to make sure you are not shorting out to the case somewhere.

Yes, I tried to power up with only mother board, CPU, CPU Fan, RAM and video card, and the power button from case, but I did not try to use a cardboard. Maybe I should try it.

Thanks!

are u sure your bios under PCHealth is not set to Enabled for cpu monitoring?...if u do so and the cpufan is not plugged into FAN4 connector, your mobo will boot for 1sec and then since your fan is not plugged into fan4...it thinks yer fan failed and will shut down yer system plain and simple.

 

[Askani]

Got my board, earlier in the week and was finally able to install. So far, the board rocks. Problems I encountered, did not boot with Duron 1.3ghz (Morgan Core), so I had to boot up with my 600mhz Duron. Did the bois update and it recognized the 1.3ghz Duron. I installed 1GB of DDR ram and it only recognized 512mb, but in the bios is stated ram slot 3 and 4 were occupied. Took the sticks out and reinstalled them. I pushed them down hard. Finally recognized them. This board can be a bit quirky, but it's one hell of a board at a great price. Thank you Abit, Compgeeks, and most importantly Anadtech. 🙂

 

[wshtb]

Originally posted by: slycat

Originally posted by: wshtb

Originally posted by: Delbert
What happens if you disconnect EVERYTHING except the CPU and RAM. Still .5 seconds of power-up?
Also try removing it from the case and setting it on a piece of cardboard or something to make sure you are not shorting out to the case somewhere.

Yes, I tried to power up with only mother board, CPU, CPU Fan, RAM and video card, and the power button from case, but I did not try to use a cardboard. Maybe I should try it.

Thanks!

are u sure your bios under PCHealth is not set to Enabled for cpu monitoring?...if u do so and the cpufan is not plugged into FAN4 connector, your mobo will boot for 1sec and then since your fan is not plugged into fan4...it thinks yer fan failed and will shut down yer system plain and simple.

I tried both 3 and 4 but it doesn't work. I have sent it back for RMA.

But thanks for your information.

 

[Willith]

I got this board last week and finally got to install it this weekend. I used to have an Abit KT7-RAID and I had hoped that I could just plug in my old hard drives and use my old load, but it didn't work that way. The only problems I've had with the board are getting the drived to be recognised by the IDE controllers. I have 3 hard drives on IDE's 3 & 4 and a CD and Zip 250 on IDE 1. I had a hard time getting the computer to see the CD or zip, I have them both on CS and am using 80 pin connectors and it used to work great in my last computer, but I had to keep unhooking them adn rebooting for the system to finally see all my drives. I thought it was werid about the slot 4 thing for the RAM and it got me right off the bat too. Otherwise this has been a nice board, but the layout is a little crappy for my current case because I have bottom mounted hard drives and with both RAID IDE's down there too it's pretty crapmed.

EDIT:

Here's my configuration:

T-Bird 1.4
512MB PC2100 Mushkin
2X IBM 75 GXP's
WS 120JB
MSI Ti4400
Santa Cruz Sound
Linksys NIC
Zoom Modem

 

[iwearnosox]

I haven't read this thread but I wanted to drop by and crap a bit: I owned a kg7 and brought it back faster than kermit humping a pig- it was a tremendous pos motherboard, just didn't work right. I replaced it with a KR7 which is working flawlessly.

Just wanted to share.

 

[MAYAN]

Well, here is a little more from my board, it has been running great (no overclock) since Saturday when I installed it. The only problem that I had was with the memory, it wouldn't sit right; nothing else other than that.

Here is what I have:

Antec 1040
AMD 1800+
2 80mm Antec Fan
Crucial 512 2100
3COM NIC
Hercules Game Theater XP
GeForce3 Ti 200
4 WD 30GB 7200RPM in raid 0+1 (first time playing with raid)
1 WD 100GB 7200RPM
1 LiteOn 32x burner

After that I don't have any more power connectors. I will have to get some splitters to connect a DVD, and maybe another burner. Well that's it for now , I will keep you updated guys.

🙂

 

[nonchalant]

heh ive got a kg7-lite (bought it last august when it came out) but i could use this. its cheaper/almost as cheap as a good raid card anyway, hehe.

anyway went to geek's site and its still 59, however i don't see a $10 coupon on techbargains or fw... did it expire? i only see a 10% (exculudes geek offers)

anyone wanna clue meh in ?

 

[Budarow]

I got my KG7Raid board a week or so ago and finally put together my 1st PC using it an Antec SX830 case with an Antec 300 watt PS, a Duron 900 MHz CPU and a ThermalCool HS/fan. I'm putting this PC in a "hot" room of the house (home office) so hopefully the 8 fans (chipset fan, PS fan, CPU fan, 2 input case fans, 2 output case fans, and video card fan) running over the various chips/case will keep this puppy nice and cool.

It booted up OK a few times (with 512 MBs of Crucial 266 MHz RAM in Dimms No. 1 and No. 4, Radeon 32 DDR video card, DVD drive and 1 HD) to the Set-up/BIOS screen and now it's time to install Win98SE and all the other PCI cards (e.g., TV-Tuner, Ethernet, Sound, & Firewire).

The only "problem" I've had thus far was having to losen up all the studs and "slightly" push the mobo away from the I/O panel because the AGP video card didn't have enough room for installation (i.e., the AGP slot was 1/16" to 1/32" too close to the I/O panel).

I wanted to line the studs up with the mounting holes on-center as much as possible to avoid any chance of "short-circuits" because some of the circuits appear to be very close to a mounting hole or 2.

It amazes me to see how close the "tolerences" are with PCs in general.

More info. later.....