ECS KN1 SLI Extreme
Over the past few years, ECS has built up a reputation of producing extremely affordable motherboards. In all of my years of experience, ECS motherboards have been quite adequate for basic computing use. However, they have never excelled in the overclocking department and carry a reputation as a poor overclocker. Often times, consumers would have trouble running the motherboard stably while tinkering with the limited adjustments in the BIOS. We last encountered an ECS motherboard when reviewing the RS480-M, based on the ATI XPRESS200 chipset. Surprisingly, the motherboard overclocked very well, even with the limited BIOS options. I was very fortunate to be invited to an ECS editor's event held in San Jose, California. There, ECS showed off their upcoming products and gave presentations on how they planned to address the needs of the enthusiast. They dubbed themselves the "new ECS." Their showcase of products was definitely a crucial first step in improving ECS's reputation in the enthusiast crowd. At the time of the event, they were already preparing to mass release their Crossfire motherboard for both the AMD and Intel platforms. Also displayed at the event was their Nvidia SLI solution--the KN1 SLI Extreme.
KN1 SLI Extreme Package
Although
the motherboard comes with a relatively low price tag, the bundle that
came along with the motherboard was exceptional. For those who favor
front access for USB and IEEE 1394 ports, you can unscrew the PCI
bracket and mount the ports on a 5.25" drive bay. This option can come
in very handy. There is also a PCI slot with an external SATA port.
External SATA drives are not even available yet, but ECS is already
providing ways for enthusiasts to use them. One interesting accessory
bundled is the Ethernet cord. Personally, I find it surprising that an
Ethernet cord was bundled with a motherboard. Don't they usually come
with networking hardware or software? The rest of the bundle is
consists of the typical necessities like IDE cables, driver CDs, user
manuals, and SLI bridge.
Motherboard Layout
The general
layout of the KN1 SLI Extreme ranks among some of the well
designed motherboards. The DIMM slots are color coded yellow and
purple to denote which slots will enable dual channel. One of the
more exceptional aspects of the physical design of the KN1 SLI Extreme is the placement of all the IDE
connectors and the ATX power connector. They are all located at
the top right corner of the motherboard, allowing enthusiasts to easily
connect devices and manage cable mess. Right below the DIMM slots
are the Nvidia MCP chipset cooler and the SATA ports. Four of the
SATA connectors are located towards the right side of the motherboard
and away from edges of PCI slots, but two of them are located near the
second PCI-E x16 slot, which can create a possible compatibility problem when
third party VGA coolers like the Arctic Cooling VGA Silencers are used.
As with any
SLI motherboard, two PCI-E x16 slots are provided. The primary
slot is colored orange and should be the one used when only one video
card is installed. The second slot is blue and should only be used
when running in SLI mode, or if you want to just add another video card
for multiple displays. If you run a single video card in the blue
slot, you will lose bandwidth performance. If you look closely at
the picture below, you will notice something else that is amazing about
the physical layout of the motherboard. The KN1 SLI Extreme does
not need a switch card or jumpers to enable or disable SLI! It is
all plug and play. There is only one PCI-E x1 slot available and
that is located above the second PCI-E x16 slot. If you ever find
the need to use PCI-E x1 slot in the future, rest assured that there is plenty of
space even when running SLI video cards. There is ample space
between both PCI-E x16 slots so using aftermarket VGA coolers will not
be a problem. As with any SLI motherboard, running two video cards
will require additional power. This is where the 4pin Molex
connector comes into play. The connector is located above the
primary PCI-E x16 slot. I personally do not find this placement
ideal, but there are not many choice locations for this connector.
Motherboard Layout Continued
At the very
bottom of the motherboard are the USB and IEEE 1394 headers.
Because the back I/O area does not have any FireWire ports, two IEEE
1394 headers are provided. There are three USB headers to allow
six additional USB ports, and along with the four ports in the back,
there are ten USB ports total. At the back I/O, there are the
usual keyboard and mouse PS2 ports, a serial port, SPDIF, two RJ45s, and
8-channel surround sound audio jacks. One interesting note about
the KN1 SLI Extreme is its rear 40mm exhaust fan. This type of setup is
similar to Abit's Fatal1ty motherboard line. The fan is placed
directly over the MOSFET area and comes with a duct to aid in hot air
removal. The 8-channel surround sound is powered by none other
than Realtek's ALC850 audio codec.
The front
I/O connections are nicely color-coded but not labeled.
Enthusiasts will still have to refer to the user manual when plugging in
the appropriate connectors. There is ample space around the CPU
socket area and using large aftermarket CPU coolers will not be a
problem. The only annoyance with the physical layout of the
motherboard is the location of the 4pin 12v connector. Placed at
the top left corner of the motherboard is not a big problem, but
squeezing it right next to the 40mm fan duct will not allow easy
installation of the power cable, especially when working inside a case.
BIOS
The BIOS of
the KN1 SLI Extreme is nothing spectacular, but it does show improvement
from their previous motherboards. There are voltage options for
both the CPU and the memory. Unfortunately, there are no voltage
options for the HyperTransport Bus, which as we have found, can hinder
overclocking results.
The VDIMM
provided is very surprising, even if it maxes out at 3.11v. That
is certainly enough for the majority of memory modules currently
available. There are options to adjust latencies and even the
command rate, which is a plus. Since a lot of us are used to DFI
or Abit motherboards, more options for further memory adjustments should
be included. In retrospect, this is not a serious problem; it is
definitely an improvement over the RS480-M, where only the CAS latency
could be changed. One other voltage option missing was the chipset
voltage. As mentioned earlier, the lack of LDT voltage options can
really hinder the maximum overclock. The same goes with the
chipset voltage. Running high speeds of 300HTT+ on the motherboard
will definitely require a little boost in voltage to stabilize computing
operations. I looked through all the BIOS pages and could not find
a fan speed controller for the small 40mm exhaust fan. Boo to
that. Although I did not find it annoying, the 40mm fan is still
audible, making silent computing almost impossible.
Software
Even though
the KN1 SLI Extreme is known as a budget SLI motherboard, it does come
with a decent software bundle. There are a few programs on the
driver CD that can come in handy. The only lacking utility I see
would be an in-Windows overclocking or monitoring program.
Enthusiasts use monitoring software programs more and more these days
and not having one present feels a little weird.
Test Setup and Overclocking
Test
Setup:
Overclocking: Overclocking potential on the RS480-M was an eye-opener. After seeing the capabilities of ECS's Micro-ATX motherboard, I had no doubts that the KN1 SLI Extreme would be a poor overclocker. The first test will be conducted with the memory divider at 1:1. The second test will be with a divider, so that the RAM would not pose as a bottleneck. The memory timings were left as loose as possible, the LDT multiplier was set at 100MHZ and CPU multiplier at 6x. I made sure that nothing would bottleneck the potential of the chipset and motherboard. My first shot was for 300HTT. I figured that the lack of chipset voltage and LDT voltage would cause instability in the overclock. I was wrong. The motherboard booted up fine and everything ran smoothly. ECS has surprised me again. I checked CPU-Z and found that the HTT was running at 290MHz. At this point I scratched my head and downloaded a newer version of CPU-Z, thinking that the software was too old. Sadly, after a bit of playing around in the BIOS, I have come to the conclusion that the BIOS has limited my overclock to 290HTT, even though I had set it higher. Just for fun, I pushed to 320HTT. The system continued to boot up and run fine but HTT remained stuck at 290MHz. Downloading a new BIOS did not help resolve this issue.
290HTT is not that bad of an overclock for such a budget motherboard. It is certainly not the greatest, but in light of ECS's past reputation, this is a gigantic step up forward. Good job, ECS! Now all that remains to be done is to work on the BIOS some more to break that 290HTT barrier.
Results
Sysmark 2004
Sysmark2004
is a very common benchmark used to measure a system's potential in
performance. It goes through long and grueling tests, including
compression, decompression, and office intensive programs.
3DMark2001SE
3DMark is
probably the overclocker's favorite benchmark. Unlike 3DMark2003, which
stresses mainly the video card, 3DMark2001SE tests all of the system's
main components. Increasing the CPU speed, memory speed, and video card
speeds will result in higher final scores.
PCMark2004
The
PCMark2004 system benchmark puts the entire system to work.
PCMark2002
PCMark2002
is older than PCMark2004, but still very similar.
Results Continued
Everest Home Edition
Everest Home
Edition is a good benchmark for testing memory performance. Since the
motherboard's overclocking potential and memory bandwidth is closely
related, I find this benchmark to be trustworthy.
SiSoft
Sandra
Like Everest
Home Edition, SiSoft Sandra memory bandwidth tests the motherboard's
memory bandwidth performance.
Super
PI
Since the
value of PI is an infinite value, Super PI is a speed test to find a
specified digit. In this case, we chose the millionth digit. Super PI
benefits greatly from higher FSB, as well as low latencies.
PiFast
PiFast is
similar to Super PI and the results can be greatly affected by a slight
adjustment to the memory megahertz and latency.
Unreal
Tournament 2004
Unreal
Tournament 2004 is a very popular game that is highly affected by the
system's performance. Testing was conducted with a resolution of
640x480 to minimize the dependency of GPU and CPU power.
Conclusion and Thoughts The KN1 SLI Extreme is an exemplary example of what the "new ECS" is capable of. The motherboard performed very well and could be decently overclocked for increased performance. Moreover, the price tag of the motherboard is far from steep. ECS kept their low price mentality and produced an awesome motherboard that can hang with the more expensive big boys. Of course the motherboard is far from perfect. The BIOS still needs improvement to be a real enthusiast motherboard--more voltage options and memory adjustments are needed. The motherboard also needs to provide some way to adjust the 40mm exhaust fan speed so that enthusiasts who look for silent environment to compute in. ECS continues to impress me with each new motherboard release. I have high hopes in their upcoming Crossfire motherboards and look forward to seeing its capabilities. Pros:
Cons:
We would
like to thank
ECS
for providing us the sample. If you have any questions or comments,
feel free to hit us up in the
forums. You can also check out more of our latest reviews on the
front page.
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