Iwill KV200-R Socket-A KT133 ATX

The Bad

There are a few complaints we had against the motherboard, the biggest being the issue of stability.  During our 24 hour Content Creation Winstone 2000 stability test, the KV200-R crashed for a total of 9 times, where as for other motherboards we have tested the average crash rate is about 6 to 7, with the best boards crashing no more than 1 or 2 times.  It is important to note that not all the crashes are caused by the motherboard, since the operating system and software often contribute to a lot of the crashes.  However, we try to isolate the motherboard as best as possible as the only cause of failures by keeping all other components and variables constant, so the number of crashes can be used for comparison.

The placement of the power supply connector once again caught our attention as not being ideally oriented towards the right hand side of the PCB. 

It would also have been nice if Iwill had included the ability to change the multiplier of the CPU, something that ABIT and ASUS have done to allow more effective overclocking attempts.  This absence will unfortunately keep the KV200-R out of the hands of many hardware enthusiasts.

As with most motherboard manufacturers, Iwill did not include the necessary cables to take advantage of the 2 extra USB connectors onboard, and it would definitely be something nice to have. 

With the lack of support for the AMR specification, it’s disappointing to see Iwill place the sole AMR slot on the board in an unshared position, potentially sacrificing a PCI or ISA slot for this which is of much less use. 

Finally, we would’ve liked to have seen Iwill provide a custom I/O shield that covered up the opening left by the missing second serial port.

USB Compatibility

·         Number of Front Universal Serial Bus Root Ports: 2

·         Number of Rear Universal Serial Bus Root Ports: 2

·         USB IRQ Enable/Disable in BIOS: Yes

Recommended SDRAM

Recommended SDRAM: 1 x 128MB Corsair PC133 SDRAM; 1 x 128MB Mushkin PC133 SDRAM

SDRAM Tested: 1 x 128MB Mushkin PC133 SDRAM

Manufacturer: Corsair
Purchase Website: http://www.corsairmicro.com

Manufacturer: Mushkin
Purchase Website: http://www.mushkin.com