| ECS KN1 SLI Extreme Mainboard
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Motherboard Layout:
Here we will look at the individual pieces of the motherboard, showing you what makes up each section.
Starting in the lower right corner where the RAM is located, you can see that there are four (4) DDR slots. Installing memory in the same type of slot will allow it to run in Dual Channel mode (i.e. install two sticks of memory in both purple slots, or both yellow slots). Directly below the DDR slots you have two IDE connections. The one in green is IDE1, designed to run your high speed hard drives, the white IDE connector below it is a standard IDE connection. Next to those is the power connection, which accepts a 20-pin power supply cable, but you could/should run it from a 24-pin power supply. Below the power connection you have the standard floppy connection. On the edge of the board is an Anti-Burn LED; this LED will light when you SHOULD NOT remove the memory. While many of us know to wait a few seconds after shutting down the power to remove the memory, some might get over zealous and pull it out as soon as they shut down, which could potentially cause damage to the memory.
In the lower left section you will find much more than we saw in the lower right. At the top left of the board you will find the external USB 2.0 connections (yellow connectors). There are three connectors, so you can have six USB 2.0 plugs in total. Directly below the USB 2.0 connections is the parallel port header, if you happen to need that for a legacy printer you can use the included expansion slot parallel port. Below that you have the case connectors, where you connect your power button, HD/Power LED indicators, and reset switch. Next to the case connectors you will find the speaker connection and the infrared pins, and below all of this we find the clear CMOS jumper.
There are two (2) SATA Generation 2 connectors, controlled by the Silicon Image SiI3132 chipset, that run at 3GB/s. On these connections you have the opportunity to use port multipliers and to use eSATA (external SATA) devices which can be up to six(6) times faster than USB 2 and 1394 connections! Next to those is the Northbridge chipset heatsink and fan. This is actually placed really well, because on most SLI motherboards the Northbridge is located under one of the PCI-E slots, which means you are stuck with small heatsinks and fans. The placement of it on this board allows you the opportunity to replace it with other Northbridge heatsinks! Directly below the Northbridge are four (4) SATA ports, controlled by the nForce4 SLI, and these run at 1.5GB/s or 3.0GB/s independently.
You will find the BIOS battery next to the SATA connections. Usually the battery lays flat on the board, but ECS has opted to make it an upright slot, so the battery stands up. Finally, next to the battery are three fan connections, two (2) for case fans, and one (1) used for the Northbridge fan.
Moving up the board to the upper left you again have several connectors along the edge directly above the USB 2.0 connections. These are for 1394 ports (orange connections), the CD audio, and front audio ports. Next to those connections we have the expansion slots. There are three (3) PCI 2.3 slots. Next is a blue PCI-E 16x slot, this is for a second PCI-E video card. Next to the blue PCI-E 16x slot is the PCI-E 8x slot. The final orange slot is the main PCI-E 16x slot, which is where your main video card for SLI mode will run.
Directly next to the orange PCI-E slot is a four (4)-pin Molex connection that provides additional power to the SLI set-up (if your cards have individual power connectors, you may not need to add power to this plug). You might have noticed there is a common SLI component missing. There is no SLI card to flip around and switch between two separate video cards, and SLI mode. This is done electronically! In this area you can also see the BIOS above the yellow pci slot. There is also a jumper between the Phoenix BIOS and the yellow PCI slot which enables/disables the ability to flash the BIOS.
The final section of the motherboard (the upper right corner) to be checked out is where we find the 939 pin CPU socket. This is compatible with all current 939 pin CPUs, ranging from the AMD Athlon-64 through the AMD Athlon-64 X2 Dual Core CPUs. The heat sink bracket is held in place by screws rather than pushpins. This means that you can use after-market heat sinks that use screws instead of the clips. Directly above the CPU is a fluorescent green fan hood that is attached to a 40mm fan. This fan is designed to pull heat away from the CPU and the power capacitors and push it out the back of the case. This fan seems to work well as a significant amount of warm air comes out the back port. This is a plain fan that runs very quietly, but if you wish to change it you do have that option. Something I did notice is the motherboard I/O shield is still keyed for a parallel port, and the fan would probably operate better if the shield was cut specifically for the fan.
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