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The Bundle

The ECS KN1's bundle is more or less what you would expect from a mid- to high-end board, along with a few perks.

A listing follows:

• Software CD (with drivers, tweaking utilities, hardware monitor)
• Lengthy manual with high-resolution colour photographs
• Rear I/O metal plate
• One 80-conductor IDE cable, one 40-conductor IDE cable, one floppy cable
• Six SATA cables with durable ends (because these things always break)
• SATA power adapter (two SATA power connectors)
• One ~6 foot CAT5 Ethernet cable
• Rear plate with parallel (LPT1) port
• Rear plate wit 2x USB 2.0 and 2x IEEE1394 connectors
• Front 3.5" bay shell for moving the 2x USB 2.0/2x IEEE1394a connectors to the front
• BIOS TopHat

Impressive -- I can't come up with anything that is lacking from this bundle. ECS pretty much has all of the bases covered. You'll also notice that I left the best feature for last.

It is a difficult task to be innovative with motherboards. There are a great number of things that have to be implemented, and have to be implemented correctly. Motherboard manufacturers simply cannot be too creative with their motherboards -- they can only pack more extra features in the hopes that you will pick their product over a competitor's. This time around, ECS has proven that one can be innovative, and actually provide a very useful feature. Enter the "BIOS TopHat".

Similar in concept to Gigabyte's "Dual BIOS", ECS' "BIOS TopHat" seems to be a more effective solution. The concept is simple: in the case of BIOS corruption/mis-flashing, you have a backup BIOS available to resurrect your machine with. While Gigabyte merely stores the BIOS image twice on the same chip (at least on recent motherboards), ECS provides you with a whole separate contraption that you use only when you need to.

The reason I say ECS' solution seems to be more effective is because I heave heard of instances where Gigabyte's Dual BIOS did not manage to revive a dead motherboard. ECS' solution can be thought of as an "override chip". If something goes terribly wrong, you install the TopHat socket + chip over top of the permanent BIOS chip, boot up the computer, remove the TopHat while the computer is on, and then re-run the flashing program with the appropriate BIOS image.

The TopHat device itself is merely two BIOS chip sockets sandwiched together with a tiny PCB. The empty side is placed over top of the motherboard-mounted BIOS chip, at which point all of contact points of the old chip touch the inside of the socket. The properly-flashed TopHat then overrides the BIOS stored on the original motherboard chip. It is a very simple, yet very effective concept. I'd like to see more of this kind of thing on all motherboards. ECS has my gratitude here.

The Board

The first thing that catches my eye about the ECS KN1 Extreme is the colour scheme.

While I'm not the biggest fan of purple, the entire blend of colours actually comes together quite well. All slots and connectors are easily identifiable, making installation less of a hunt. The second thing that catches my eye is the general cleanliness of the motherboard itself. At first I couldn't figure out why the KN1 looked so empty -- then it struck me. There is barely any writing on the board itself. Usually motherboards will have every single chip, resistor, and capacitor labeled in white -- the KN1 has virtually none of this. This lack of writing lends greatly to the friendly and clean look of the board, and makes searching for various headers a piece of cake.

The layout of the KN1 itself is good, but I do have a qualms here or there, and they mostly surround the placement of the IDE and floppy connectors. If you look closely at the top-down photograph of the KN1, you'll notice that the IDE and floppy connectors are literally all over the place. The floppy connector is located at the bottom-left of the motherboard, separated by a considerable distance from the primary and secondary IDE connectors in the upper-right quadrant. For those of us who still have floppy drives, the floppy cable will drape across a large portion of the board in order to get to that connector.

The second issue is the placement of the tertiary IDE connector. It is located along the same edge of the board as the floppy connector, but on the far right-hand side. Again, cable drape could be an issue, especially considering that all of your hard drives and floppy drive will probably be in the same physical drive cage. The front panel headers (power, LEDs, etc.) are located directly above this IDE connector, making working with these headers a complete pain in the butt, as they will be obstructed by any IDE cable plugged in. I always prefer to have these headers on the dead-bottom of motherboard.

There is a large empty area in the lower-right corner of the motherboard that is currently occupied by a metal "ECS Extreme" sticker. I don't pretend to be a motherboard designer, but it seems that if the CMOS battery were to be moved where the sticker is, there would be more than ample room to place the tertiary IDE connector along the right side of the board, which would make working with this area of the board more pleasant.

I'm just being nit-picky now, though. ECS has done a great job designing this motherboard otherwise. The DIMM slots are placed far, far away from the PCIe x16 slot, there is a huge amount of room available around the CPU socket, and even the nForce 4 chip is located in such a place that you can install a large cooler and still have no problems. The rear input/output panel is clean and simple, providing the S/PDIF optical and coaxial outputs, four USB 2.0 ports, the two Ethernet ports, as well as the standard PS/2/serial/analog audio.

The last point of interest is that big honking thing in the upper-left corner. Also a product of some creative thinking, the contraption you'll find there is a 40 mm fan surrounded by a plastic neon shroud. The shroud is oriented in such a way that it sucks hot air from around the CPU and voltage regulators and exhausts it outside of the case, leading to lower temperatures, and undoubtedly an increased life span.