Just ordered Iwill KK266: Was this a bad choice?

[Brats]

Well, after reading reviews of this board, including Anandtech's, it seemed ideal in almost every respect. So I ordered it yesterday from newegg.com. However, I've been reading support forums (such as this one and Iwill's own) and I'm seeing a lot of horror-stories about this board -- mostly, it seems, wrt POST and intial setup. :Q

I can cancel the order today, and I'm debating now (darnit). Is this board really as troublesome as many of the posts I've read say? I'm buing this, along with a T-Bird 1.2G/266 to replace my just-died Abit KA7/Athlon Classic 700, and I want performance, but stability is more important to me. Any thoughts?

Thanks,

Brats

 

[MisterPants]

Heh, same thing happened to me, problem with KA7 and athlon classic 700. I went with the MSI K7T Turbo, but if I had to buy a KT133A board now, I'd get the KK266. IMHO a better choice now is a DDR board on the 760 chipset, such as the EPoX 8K7A or Gigabyte GA7DXR, but for a SDRAM board that is a great choice.

 

[TuffGuy]

just got one yesterday, and it's great. no problems whatsoever. btw, i'm using the march bios, not the new one.

 

[Brats]

Thanks, I'm still somewhat edgy about the Iwill, but my other choice would be the MSI (essentially everything I've read says this is the most stable board out there). However, something about the Iwill still strikes a chord for me.

I really don't want to buy a bunch of new memory, hence my sticking with a SDRAM-supporting mobo. Besides, the reviews I've read on DDR haven't shown a compelling improvement in speeds. If the difference was 50% or more I'd consider it, but that's not the case.

Last, I think I figured out what went wrong, and I could kick myself! I'm using a case that includes a hood/fan that sits over the cpu and pushes air onto it. Nice setup. I decided, a week ago, to put a higher-volume fan in the hood, and swapped in a 3DfxCool fan. I also reseated and secured the Athlon.

Well, while I'm not sure about this ... it seems I plugged the hood fan into the "fan1" header, and plugged the cpu fan into the "fan2" header. The net result, that I just found, was that the cpu fan wasn't spinning! And, I couldn't see it because the hood completely obscures the cpu!

Blast, why why why didn't I think to check? I don't really understand why the cpu fan didn't work in the other header (it still doesn't, but the hood fan works fine in either). So, I'm guessing the cpu smoked -- the system had been acting flakey, and one day it refused to boot.

So, knowing this, I actually don't even need the new mobo/cpu combo, I just need another classic athlon.

But, the 1.2G/266 option is too much to ignore! I'll just chalk this one up, and maybe buy another athlon classic and build another system out of the parts, and upgrade my system to the T-bird.

Thanks,

Brats

 

[acexg1]

Maybe there are more problems posted here because more people are buying these boards?
I got a KK266 a week ago, and I love it. If you see "horror stories" on Iwill's forums, and no other boards, its because that's only for Iwill's boards! (Go figure.) All mobo manufacturers will have some boards that are duds. Just seeing some on Iwill's forum is not a good standard of comparison, as you won't have people with problems with, say, Abit, MSI, etc. boards. And there are many posts on here who have problems with many other boards.

 

[Brats]

acexg1: I'm feeling better about the Iwill, given the overall positive comments I've seen, as well as those in this thread. Thanks (keep 'em coming!)

But, no, I didn't want to say that I was surprised to see only negative comments about Iwill mobos on Iwill's site, I was just looking to see what Iwill users were saying about Iwill boards (I wasn't looking for, say Asus griping). There were a lot of gripes about the KK266 there, and so I went to the MSI forum to compare. It seemed like heaven in comparison, very few "I can't get this $#@* board to work" stuff, mostly just chit-chat and tweak discussion. In this forum too there are a good number of Iwill complaints (can't POST, can't restart for 5 minutes, hangs, BSOD, so on).

But, I've decided to stick with the Iwill, for the majority it seems like a winner.

 

[silky]

Brats: My house is now totally an Iwill home. Bought my first KK266 2 months ago and it had to be RMA'd with the mutiplier recall. I was so impressed with their service and tech support, that when my A7V died in my internet server, I got another KK266. And last but not least after 6 months of hell with my wife's P3V4X and 1GHz Intel, she went to Iwill KK266 and T-Bird 1.33GHz last weekend. I've owned a lot of motherboards and I will say the KK266 is the best so far. Good luck with yours, you're going to like it.

 

[Renob]

Your going to love the board I think its the best PC133 board out.

 

[easy2kill]

I have a quick question ... I went out and bought the iWill kk266 board mainly because it said on the box, "DDR 266/200 MHz FSB". I know I'm lame, but I later realized this board did NOT support DDR memory sticks after I took it home. Why on earth does it say DDR on the box if it does not support DDR Ram?

 

[mamisano]

I whole-heartedly agree. My KK266 is by far the best motherboard I have owned to date. I am currently running it at 150mhz FSB, with my Duron 600 @ 900mhz.

You did not make a mistake ordering that board

 

[gigantor]

Can't get USB to work on mine. Good luck

 

[acexg1]

easy2kill, it says DDR FSB, not supports DDR RAM. FSB = Front Side Bus, not ram. Only the fsb runs as DDR, like it says right there on the box.
gigantor, did you make sure to turn the bios option for Onboard USB chip to enabled?

 

[Brats]

easy2Kill:
As acexg1 noted, it's the front-side-bus that's DDR, not memory (the bus runs at 100/133 but xfers data on every clock transition, hence the double data rate). I admit, though, that it can be confusing because "DDR" is so closely associated with a memory type. Now, if you want an Iwill DDR (RAM) board, try the KA266 or KA266-R.

 

[Brats]

Hey everyone, thanks! for all the responses and support! You've convinced me to stick with the Iwill KK266, and I'm looking forward to it coming in so I can see what it'll do.

Thanks again,
Brats

 

[gigantor]

yea acex. its enabled. All I get is windows protection error when I boot up, or bluescreen if I plug it in after I boot up.
Also downloaded the MS and VIA usb patches. Didn't change a thing.

 

[sean2002]

I've had my Iwill for about 2 months now and I love it. I'm even using the on-board sound and it rocks, no more VIA-Live problems. I have had no crashes at all with board even when running at 160fsb ! My system benchmarks higher than my buddies MSI based board with the same specs as mine. The only problem that I had was it not wanting to cold boot on the first try, but ever since I got rid of my geforce2 and got a radeon the problem is gone.

 

[sean2002]

BTW if you don't have a LIVE card the best BIOS to use is the luckydaze 307, and if you do have a LIVE card the luckydaze 426

 

[Biggs]

Been running a 1 Ghz Tbird@1.425 Ghz @ 150FSB rock stable for months. Another vote for this fine fine SDRAM mobo.

 

[Brats]

sean2002:


<< ...The only problem that I had was it not wanting to cold boot on the first try, but ever since I got rid of my geforce2 and got a radeon the problem is gone. >>



I intend to use my GeForce 2 MX, are their problems with these cards on the KK266?

Thanks,
Brats

 

[Jeff H]

gigantor, apply these two patches to fix your USB:
USB Filter Driver

Microsoft VIA USB Patch for Win98SE - assuming you're running Win98SE <g>

 

[Niege]

I just love mine, with the same 1.2/266. Now that I'm in W2K it's even more stable.

 

[gigantor]

Jeff , I did apply those patches and they didn't have an affect. Unless I did something wrong? I just ran the exe.

 

[sean2002]

The cold booting problem was just annoying. If I had the computer off for a few hours when I went to turn it on I would get 1 long beep then 2 short beeps then the message monitor in power saving mode. I would have to cycle the power 2-5 times before it would boot right.

 

[Brats]

<< The cold booting problem was just annoying. If I had the computer off for a few hours when I went to turn it on I would get 1 long beep then 2 short beeps then the message monitor in power saving mode. I would have to cycle the power 2-5 times before it would boot right. >>



Thanks for the feedback. For me, such a problem is more than annoying, I don't want to have to re-re-re-boot my system to get it running! Do you know if this is an nvidia GeForce class problem (including my MX card)?

 

[Ronzon]

&quot;The cold booting problem was just annoying. If I had the computer off for a few hours when I went to turn it on I would get 1 long beep then 2 short beeps then the message monitor in power saving mode. I would have to cycle the power 2-5 times before it would boot right. &quot;


Generally the error code points to a video problem. If the option is in the BIOS, change the AGP Driving Force to EA. Actually for some reason, this problem seems particularly common with the NVIDIA Geforce line. Be sure the video card is fully seated in the AGP slot.