NF4 Ultra Shoot-Out: Abit vs. MSI vs. ECS
ECS KN1 Extreme: Specifications & Bundle
The last entrant we present to you in this round-up comes to us by way of ECS. Over the years, ECS has been known as a provider of inexpensive products, that tended to lack some more advanced features found on competing solutions. With the KN1 Extreme, however, ECS aims to change their image with a motherboard allegedly designed with enthusiasts in mind. The KN1 Extreme includes some items found on much more expensive products, although ECS does put their own spin on things. For example, this board has an "OTES-like" VRM cooling apparatus, but it's not as elaborate as Abit's. And the KN1 Extreme has dual-LAN and a secondary drive controller like the MSI board, but one of the Ethernet controllers is only 10/100 and instead of using a more established Silicon Image or Promise drive controller, ECS went with a SiS180. Take a look...
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DUAL LAN REAR PANEL I/O INTERNAL I/O CONNECTORS & HEADERS |
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ECS included a varied assortment of accessories with the KN1 Extreme. The board shipped with six (two in each baggie) orange SATA cables, a Molex-to-SATA power cable adapter, an IDE cable, a floppy cable, an Ethernet cable, and a bracket that housed a parallel port. ECS also provided a pair of driver and utility CDs (that included a copy of NVIDIA's nTune System Utility), a case badge, a user's manual, and a custom I/O shield with the KN1 Extreme. On top of these items, we found a case bracket with two USB ports and two Firewire ports, that can be disassembled and used in conjunction with a 3.5" bracket that's also bundled with the board.
Lastly, ECS included something we haven't encountered before. We've seen Gigabyte's dual-BIOS, and other board sport a pair of BIOS Flash ROMs, but ECS took a different route. Instead of equipping the board with a secondary BIOS, ECS packages their "Top-Hat Flash" device with the KN1 Extreme. It's basically a Flash ROM with a double-sided socket. Should the BIOS on the board fail for whatever reason, users can simply snap the Top-Hat Flash Device over the existing chip to boot the system. Then you can remove the Top-Hat Flash device and re-flash the board. Of course, this isn't the most elegant BIOS backup feature we've encounters, but it's effective and does the job its designed to do.
