ECS KN1 SLI Extreme

Overall Summary:

The ECS KN1 SLI Extreme has a good bundle - it's designed to be cheap, but still coming with a good set of features. For example, there is still a good complement of SATA cables and all the necessary PCI brackets for the additional port headers supported by the motherboard.

We have seen other manufacturers attempt to save money in this area, by including a less than satisfactory bundle of cables and expansion brackets. This bundle is not complete, but it is more than satisfactory when you factor in the price of this motherboard. There are arguably two SATA cables and four USB ports that are unusable if you don't have any in your spares box.

Other motherboards based on NVIDIA's SLI use the full PCI-Express x16 bandwidth in single mode, while ECS have opted for two PCI-Express x8 slots that don't change when only one video card is installed. Depending on what video card you are looking to use, the additional bandwidth is not needed. We believe that the consumers who are likely to purchase this board would not be buying a GeForce 7800 GTX 512 or Radeon X1800XT, for example, which might make use of all the bandwidth of a x16 slot.

The board comes a lot of integrated peripherals, both types of S/PDIF and novel ECS gadgets like PCI Extreme slot, Top Hat Flash, six SATA2 ports, inclusion of IEEE 1394a Firewire and a full complement of USB ports and an instructive colour scheme as well. The fans are a little noisy in comparison to other solutions, but they are tolerable. The fan and shroud that extract heat from the PWM area next to the CPU does its job, despite looking a little cheap.

Value:

In the US you can buy the ECS KN1 SLI Extreme for around $115. However, you can also pick up a Gigabyte GA-K8N Pro-SLI for $100, an ABIT AN8 SLI (non OTES version) for $110, the DFI nF4 SLI Infinity and ASUS A8N-SLI for $120, while the Foxconn NF4SK8AA-8EKRS, which we reviewed not so long ago for $125. The ECS product is a reasonably well featured motherboard and bundle, but it is placed deep in a price range where the more popular motherboard manufacturers are shipping cut-down versions of their flagship products which might be more desirable

It's a better story in the UK however, where the EPoX EP-9NPAJ, Gigabyte GA-K8NXP-SLI and MSI K8N SLI-F can be bought for around £80 and the ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe and ABIT AN8 SLI are around £85. But the ECS is even better value in the UK at just over £75 for the full bundle and board, or the 'lite' version can be had from Udiggit for just under £65! That's pretty incredible considering the cost of the NForce 4 SLI MCP alone is one of the most expensive chipsets available. The 'lite' version from Udiggit is a great value board.

Final Thoughts...

This is yet another ECS motherboard that has impressed us, to a certain extent.

The ECS KN1 SLI Extreme is a reasonably full-featured motherboard that fits into the cut down, value territory that is occupied by the likes of ABIT, ASUS, DFI and Gigabyte, so there are some choices to be made. Is it worth opting for a cut down version of one of the flagship 'big-name' boards over the well-featured ECS KN1 SLI Extreme?

ECS has invested heavily in making sure their Extreme series motherboards cater for the enthusiasts needs, and we believe that they were a little bit unlucky here. This board is fast, and if the retail reliability is as good as ECS say it is, this board is worth considering if you are looking for a reasonably priced SLI motherboard. However, we find it hard to give the ECS KN1 SLI Extreme an unswerving recommendation, based on the prices of the other boards in its market.

Editor's Comment:

We won't shy away from telling you that we have had reliability issues with ECS motherboards in our labs in the past. As Rich has highlighted, this particular board had an Ethernet port which passed away during the final stages of our testing.

We have discussed these issues at length with ECS and we have been told that the reasons behind this are that the boards we have had in the past have not been final. ECS has attempted to provide us with early samples in order to be one of the first to release a review of their upcoming products, and we appreciate their support.

This has meant that we've been given pre-production motherboards that are much more likely to have issues relating to early design flaws and BIOS problems in particular. I had a first look at this motherboard about three months ago and I was plagued with early BIOS issues with the first three BIOS revisions that I recieved from ECS.

At that time, the board was very fast - almost as fast as Rich has shown here - but I was having problems getting it to complete our test suite, never mind any stress testing. After three weeks of messing around with early BIOS revisions, I decided to cut off and wait for an official BIOS to be posted on the ECS website.

I didn't think I was giving the motherboard a fair representation while plagued with elementary-level stability issues. Rich has come back here and tested the board again with a production BIOS and it has proven to be a stable motherboard, despite the Ethernet port failure. We have been assured that there have been no reports of Ethernet ports passing away on the final version of the KN1 SLI Extreme and we are happy to pass this away as an 'early sample issue'.

In the future, ECS will be shipping us motherboards from the first shipment of retail production boards in order to give you, the consumer and enthusiast, an accurate representation of how the product you would buy off the shelves will perform. Overall, we're happy to say that the KN1 SLI Extreme is a cool board if you're looking for something in this price range.

- Tim Smalley