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The
Layout
The
over all quality of the CS60-EC is good.
All of the connectors are placed close
to the edge of the board so when your cables are
connected, there is little obstruction of air
flow. All
connections and jumpers are clearly labeled so it
isn?t necessary to have the manual handy when
setting this board up.
All traces and solder joints are clean.
With
the CS60-EC, DFI has opted to provide 1 AGP, 1 CNR,
& 5 PCI slots.
Unless your rig is jam packed with
peripheral cards, 5 PCI slots should prove to be
ample.
It also offers 3 fan headers, 1 for the CPU
cooler, one for the AGP slot, and an additional
one for a chassis fan.
We really liked the idea of powering the
AGP fan off-board, which in theory should provide
cleaner power to the video card, which is helpful
when over-clocking.
The one thing that was disappointing though
is that the AGP fan connector, as with all other
manufacturers, is the same as the CPU and Chassis
fan connector.
With all of the video cards that have moved
through the labs at Hot Hardware, we have never seen
a stock video cooler that uses this type of connector.
It
would be nice to see video card manufacturers
standardize their power plugs so we could take
advantage of this feature.
Finding an adapter for this has proven
difficult and we ultimately changed the plug using
wire cutters and a soldering iron.
We would also like to see the position of
the plug moved between the 1st PCI slot
and the AGP slot.
Most fans included on AGP video-cards will
not have ample length to reach a plug on the other
side of the card.
There
are 15 capacitors located around the
Socket 370 and 5 more near the RAM slots, this
should provide a clean flow of current and prove to be
stable.
Unlike many other boards we?ve seen in
the past, the CS60-EC doesn?t place the
capacitors close enough to the Socket 370 to
interfere with mounting an oversized fan and heatsink.
We comfortably replaced our stock cooler
with a larger unit from CoolMasters and had no
difficulty with the capacitor placement.
Being the cooling fanatic that I am, it
would?ve been nice to see an active cooler mounted to the
chipset, however you can clearly see that there is
plenty of room to add one later.
The
CS60-EC has included extra USB connections
on-board in case you wanted to add more ports to
the system without sacrificing one of the rear
ports for a hub.
We successfully used these connectors to add two
more USB ports to the front of our test machine.
Unfortunately, DFI doesn?t include one of
the necessary adapters with the CS60-EC. (We
used one left over from a previous review) :)
All
of the case connectors are clearly labeled and
placed in a way that encourages the wires to lay
clear of the board.
After making all of our connections, we
easily bundled the slack in a neat and tidy
package, keeping them from restricting any airflow
from the chassis fan.
The
same thinking was used with the placement of the
drive connectors, allowing us to easily keep the
data cables away from the board.
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| Setup
and Installation |
| Easy
as pie... |
|
When
it came to the installation of the DFI CS60-EC,
everything went as smooth as could be.
We did have a problem when connecting a
generic, powered 4-port hub though.
After installing the drivers and connecting
a device, the entire system crashed requiring a
complete reinstallation of Windows.
This wasn?t immediately clear at first
but once the hub was determined to be the problem,
we removed it and the installation went fine.
At this point we are unsure what
incompatibility exists between the CS60-EC and
this hub, we had no difficulty using this hub with a Tyan Trinity 400.
The
BIOS, Over-clocking, and Performance
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