Introduction and Specifications
Introduction
ECS is a Taiwanese based motherboard manufacturer who's products have widely been considered non-enthusiast market material for some time. Lately, ECS has moved to target the high end market, with improved products and services making them more attractive to the enthusiasts. The ECS KN3 SLI2 is one of their products attempting to fit this mold for the AMD AM2 processors. In this review, we will take a look at its features and examine how the motherboard performed against the EPoX EP-AF590SLI2, also based on the Nvidia 590SLI chipset. Here is a look at the board's specifications taken directly from the manufactures web site.
Specifications (from ECS.com)
CPU |
Socket AM2 for AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core/ Athlon 64 FX/Athlon 64 processor
High-performance Hyper Transport CPU interface.
AMD Cool 'n' Quiet™ Technology
Support transfer rate of 2000/1600/1200/800/400 mega-transfers per second.
|
Chipset |
NVIDIA nForce 590 SLI MCP
North Bridge:C51XE
South Bridge:MCP55XE
|
Memory |
Dual-channel DDR2 memory architecture
4 x 240-pin DDR2 DIMM socket support up to 32GB
Support DDR2 800/667/533/400 DDR2 SDRAM
(Due to the DRAM maximum size is 2GB at present, the memory maximum size we have tested is 8GB)
|
Expansion Slots |
2 x PCI Express x16 slot (SLI mode: 16X, 16X)
2 x PCI Express x1 slots
2 x PCI slots
|
STORAGE |
Support by MCP55XE
1 x Ultra DMA133/100/66/33 port
6 x Serial ATAII 3.0Gb/s devices(SATA 6 as eSATA & Hot Plug)
supports RAID 0, 1, 0+1, 5, JBOD and NCQ
Supported by JMB363
1 x Ultra DMA133/100/66 port
2 x Serial ATA2 devices
RAID0, RAID1& RAID 0+1 configuration
Support NCQ&eSATA & Hot plug&Port Multiplier
|
Back Panel I/O Ports |
1 x PS/2 keyboard & PS/2 mouse connectors
1 x Serial port (COM1)
1 x External SATA port
4 x USB ports
2 x RJ45 LAN connectors
1 x Audio port (Line-in,4x Line-out, Mic_in)
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Internal I/O Connectors |
1 x 24-pin ATX Power Supply connector
1 x 4-pin ATX 12V connector
1 x Auxiliary 4-pin +12V connector
1 x FDD connector
2 x IDE connectors
1 x IrDA for SIR header
1 x Speaker header
2 x 1394a headers
3 x USB 2.0 headers support additional 6 USB ports
1 x S/PDIF out header, 1 x CD-in header
7 x Serial ATA connectors
1 x 26-pin LPT header
1 x Front panel switch/LED header
1 x Front panel audio header
1x CPUFAN/1x SYSFAN/3x CASFAN connectors
|
BIOS |
Award BIOS with 4Mb Flash ROM
Supports Plug and Play 1.0A, APM 1.2, Multi Boot, DMI Full support for ACPI revision 2.0 specification
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AUDIO |
Realtek ALC883 8-channel audio CODEC Compliant with HD specification
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Form Factor |
ATX form factor; 30.5cm x 23.4 cm |
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Is this motherboard PCIe 1.0, 1.1 or 2.0?
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