ECS KN1 Extreme review

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Verdict:

Review Date: 17 May 2005

Price when reviewed: inc VAT

Reviewed By: David Ludlow

Our Rating 5 stars out of 5

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Review
Specs

When it comes to choosing a motherboard for AMD Socket 939-based PCs, you won't get a more comprehensive set of features than you get on an nVidia nForce 4 motherboard.

The KN1 Extreme ECS also performs brilliantly, thanks to the Ultra version of nVidia's chipset. We tested it using an AMD Athlon 64 4000+ processor and 1GB of Crucial RAM in a dual-channel configuration. Its scores of 117 in Shopper's Application Benchmarks and 4,581 in PCMark04 show what a capable board it is.

It has plenty of features on board too, including two Gigabit Ethernet ports, which make it perfect for sharing an internet connection. Both ports use nVidia's hardware firewall, so you have built-in protection too.

An x16 PCI-E slot enables you to install a powerful graphics card, while three PCI and two x1 PCI-E slots provide plenty of room for expansion cards. Disappointingly, while the rear houses four USB2.0 ports, there are no rear-mounted FireWire ports. Instead, ECS provides two USB2.0 and two FireWire ports on a blanking plate, which has to be connected to the headers on the motherboard. These ports can also be front-mounted in a drive bay using the provided mount, although we had trouble getting the cables to reach in our full-tower case. For storage the board has four SATA and two IDE ports. It also has two RAID SATA ports, so you can mirror or stripe two identical hard disks. Finally, the KN1 Extreme comes with ECS's Top Hat Flash, which restores a BIOS if it gets corrupted.

Considering all the features it offers, the KN1 Extreme is very good value. It would certainly make an excellent base for both performance and general work PCs.

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