IWill P4 GB
Board Revision: ?
BIOS Version: November 12, 2002
The P4 GB was obviously never conceived for the mass market, because it requires a special power supply (EPS-12V) only common in servers and workstations. However, you can also use the standard ATX power supply by plugging in the connector at the very left side of the.
However, the components are similar to those used by the other contenders. There is a Gigabit Ethernet controller from Intel (82540EM) and an AC97 codec from Analog Devices. They even thought to add a FireWire controller from Texas Instruments.
The board doesn't have IDE RAID and the design could be more streamlined - the IDE connectors are right in front of the PCI slots. This is important particularly with workstation boards, as plug-in cards are still common in this area. The placement of the floppy controller is not ideal either, as standard cables will not reach from there to every height in modern towers.
The cooling element on the Northbridge is advantageous. Other manufacturers like to use fans, since they make the motherboard look fast. Active cooling only makes sense when there is serious overclocking.
IWill gets points for four in-case fans, flawless system operation and satisfactory performance. It's just too bad that it had to be obtained by overclocking by about 50 MHz. The P4 GB is a respectable motherboard with no weaknesses, but without any pronounced strengths, either.
This works too: unlike the competitors, IWill does not need a big cooling unit, let alone fans.
