Zap
Elite Member
SUMMARY: Another decent budget board by ECS. Very easy to overclock within limits, but may not be a good choice for really high HTT. Mostly decent layout. Very good value as part of a combo. If buying separately, there may be better alternatives.
ECS KN1 Lite 1.0A Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 Ultra ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail
$59.99 +$6.94 shipping after instant discount as of 11/12/06
I got this board as part of a Newegg combo. The combo consisted of a socket 939 AMD Athlon 64 3400+ Venice core for $99.99 plus a "free" motherboard (but you have to pay for shipping). This CPU is an OEM only oddball which is not even listed AFAIK at cpucompare.amd.com. It is basically the same as a 3500+ but the HyperTransport speed is limited to 1600MHz. I don't know if that limitation is because the CPU is unable to run at higher speeds or if it is artificial. I do know that if you manually set the HT multiplier to 5x in BIOS, it won't POST. However, setting HTT to 250 with the default 4x multiplier so that the HyperTransport is running at 2000MHz works just fine (during overclocking). This board also seems to be really similar to two other ECS boards, the NFORCE4-A939 and the KN1 Extreme.
BIOS:
I'll just go over the interesting (to me) information in the BIOS.
version 1.0d 08/09/2005
Phoenix Award BIOS
no Smart Fan control
has CPU recover from failed overclock (but only if CPU causing failure)
CPU Frequency 200-400MHz (strangely some in 2MHz increments and some in 0.5MHz increments)
HT Frequency 1x-5x/Auto
CPU Voltage Control +25mV - +375mV in 25mV increments
DIMM Voltage Control 2.55-3.11v in 0.8v increments (2.63v default)
DRAM Configuration has various latency settings and memclock of 100/133/166/200/216/233/250MHz
Hammer Fid Control 4x-max in 0.5x increments
AMD K8 Cool'n'Quiet Control enable/disable
The BIOS is pretty basic but has the "important" settings. How many people need to have 20 memory timing settings or 7 different voltage settings? Well, some will claim that they do, so this board isn't for them. The BIOS in fact is almost identical to that found in the ECS NFORCE4-A939 board that I used to have.
One thing this board doesn't have in BIOS which I truely like is Smart Fan control. That may be just a personal issue, but it is important to some.
Layout:
The PCB looks near identical in layout to the ECS NFORCE4-A939 and ECS KN1 Extreme boards. I only have two real quibbles with the layout. The first is the floppy drive connector, which is below the last PCI slot. I don't personally use a floppy drive but anyone that does will hate the location of the connector. The second issue is with the Nvidia chipset location and cooler mounting mechanism. The mounting mechanism are two loops that a spring wire clips onto. That style was popular with Intel socket 478 chipsets in the past, but these days most chipset coolers use push pins. I don't know (or care) which way is better. What I care about is standardization, so that it is possible to use aftermarket cooling solutions for reasons ranging from quieter or better cooling, to just a simple dead chipset fan that needs replacing. As for the location of the chipset, it is too close to the PCI-E 16x slot.
Along the bottom are the front panel and USB connectors, plus the front panel audio connectors. I like this better than having them towards the middle of the PCB as it makes for cleaner cable routing. The SATA ports are between the chipset cooler and the CMOS battery, which is at the edge of the PCB. Not bad. The IDE ports are between the RAM slots and the edge of the PCB, right below the 24 pin ATX power connector. That actually is a great place to put the power connector. Another power connector located in a great place is the 4 pin +12v, which is right behind the PS/2 ports at the edge of the PCB. There are many motherboards that force you to run the 4 pin +12v wires over the CPU fan/heatsink, and indeed some that even makes you do that with the main power wires. Unacceptable!
Though this board has a BIOS and overclocks like the NFORCE4-A939, it actually may be more similar to the KN1 Extreme. Though I haven't owned a KN1 Extreme so I don't know how the BIOS is or how well it overclocks, the PCB is actually the KN1 Extreme, with just a "Lite" sticker over the "Extreme" silkscreening. There is a metallic tag on the PCB that says Extreme and the colors are the same (though different from NFORCE4-A939). How the actual Extreme differs in (besides hopefully BIOS and overclocking results) is the addition of Firewire, a second LAN port, an optical SPDIF output, a rear I/O fan to supposedly cool the CPU power components, a secondary HDD controller that adds one PATA and two SATA ports and a possibly better chipset cooler. The Lite has the same chipset cooler as the NFORCE4-A939.
Overclocking
With the aforementioned "strange" 3400+ CPU, I was able to hit 2640 with almost full stability at default vCore. "Almost" meaning it wouldn't go forever running stuff like Prime, but would fail or lock after a bit of time such as 15-30 minutes, but not immediately. With these results, stability is probably a vCore boost or two away. The HTT speed was 240MHz combined with the default 11x multiplier. I was able to POST at 255MHz HTT on a lowered CPU multiplier of 8x (with HT at 3x and RAM at 133MHz to take them out of the equation). 260MHz HTT would result in no POST. Interestingly the CPU recover would kick in if the CPU was pushed too high at default multiplier, but hitting 260MHz HTT resulted in no CPU recover, so I think that may be a motherboard limitation.
Something else is that sometimes CPU recover would kick in if I jumped up too high immediately. For instance I was already POSTing the board at up to 255MHz HTT, but when hitting 260MHz and it failed to POST, I had to reset CMOS by jumper. After clearing it, when setting it back up to a known working HTT the board didn't POST for a moment, and then entered CPU recover again. Saving and exiting CMOS again would get it to work fine. I tried it a few times and it did this most of the time but not all the time.
Random Thoughts:
Makes for a good budget choice for overclocking with high multiplier CPUs. I wouldn't hesitate again to buy it in such a budget combo. As for purchasing it alone, well, there's probably better choices for similar cost (except as of right now Newegg has it discounted).
One potential issue is using USB keyboards. A few Newegg reviews stated such difficulties. The NFORCE4-A939 also had USB issues, though it had to do with high speed devices such as external hard drives. This is worrysome.
If you already have this board, congratulations on owning a decent board. If you don't have it but are considering it, at regular price perhaps you should consider something else especially if you're an overclocker. As a freebie part of a combo, this made for a decent choice and indeed IMO a better choice than the Biostar alternative at the time of purchase. Note that the combo deals seem to be dead.
ECS KN1 Lite 1.0A Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 Ultra ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail
$59.99 +$6.94 shipping after instant discount as of 11/12/06
I got this board as part of a Newegg combo. The combo consisted of a socket 939 AMD Athlon 64 3400+ Venice core for $99.99 plus a "free" motherboard (but you have to pay for shipping). This CPU is an OEM only oddball which is not even listed AFAIK at cpucompare.amd.com. It is basically the same as a 3500+ but the HyperTransport speed is limited to 1600MHz. I don't know if that limitation is because the CPU is unable to run at higher speeds or if it is artificial. I do know that if you manually set the HT multiplier to 5x in BIOS, it won't POST. However, setting HTT to 250 with the default 4x multiplier so that the HyperTransport is running at 2000MHz works just fine (during overclocking). This board also seems to be really similar to two other ECS boards, the NFORCE4-A939 and the KN1 Extreme.
BIOS:
I'll just go over the interesting (to me) information in the BIOS.
version 1.0d 08/09/2005
Phoenix Award BIOS
no Smart Fan control
has CPU recover from failed overclock (but only if CPU causing failure)
CPU Frequency 200-400MHz (strangely some in 2MHz increments and some in 0.5MHz increments)
HT Frequency 1x-5x/Auto
CPU Voltage Control +25mV - +375mV in 25mV increments
DIMM Voltage Control 2.55-3.11v in 0.8v increments (2.63v default)
DRAM Configuration has various latency settings and memclock of 100/133/166/200/216/233/250MHz
Hammer Fid Control 4x-max in 0.5x increments
AMD K8 Cool'n'Quiet Control enable/disable
The BIOS is pretty basic but has the "important" settings. How many people need to have 20 memory timing settings or 7 different voltage settings? Well, some will claim that they do, so this board isn't for them. The BIOS in fact is almost identical to that found in the ECS NFORCE4-A939 board that I used to have.
One thing this board doesn't have in BIOS which I truely like is Smart Fan control. That may be just a personal issue, but it is important to some.
Layout:
The PCB looks near identical in layout to the ECS NFORCE4-A939 and ECS KN1 Extreme boards. I only have two real quibbles with the layout. The first is the floppy drive connector, which is below the last PCI slot. I don't personally use a floppy drive but anyone that does will hate the location of the connector. The second issue is with the Nvidia chipset location and cooler mounting mechanism. The mounting mechanism are two loops that a spring wire clips onto. That style was popular with Intel socket 478 chipsets in the past, but these days most chipset coolers use push pins. I don't know (or care) which way is better. What I care about is standardization, so that it is possible to use aftermarket cooling solutions for reasons ranging from quieter or better cooling, to just a simple dead chipset fan that needs replacing. As for the location of the chipset, it is too close to the PCI-E 16x slot.
Along the bottom are the front panel and USB connectors, plus the front panel audio connectors. I like this better than having them towards the middle of the PCB as it makes for cleaner cable routing. The SATA ports are between the chipset cooler and the CMOS battery, which is at the edge of the PCB. Not bad. The IDE ports are between the RAM slots and the edge of the PCB, right below the 24 pin ATX power connector. That actually is a great place to put the power connector. Another power connector located in a great place is the 4 pin +12v, which is right behind the PS/2 ports at the edge of the PCB. There are many motherboards that force you to run the 4 pin +12v wires over the CPU fan/heatsink, and indeed some that even makes you do that with the main power wires. Unacceptable!
Though this board has a BIOS and overclocks like the NFORCE4-A939, it actually may be more similar to the KN1 Extreme. Though I haven't owned a KN1 Extreme so I don't know how the BIOS is or how well it overclocks, the PCB is actually the KN1 Extreme, with just a "Lite" sticker over the "Extreme" silkscreening. There is a metallic tag on the PCB that says Extreme and the colors are the same (though different from NFORCE4-A939). How the actual Extreme differs in (besides hopefully BIOS and overclocking results) is the addition of Firewire, a second LAN port, an optical SPDIF output, a rear I/O fan to supposedly cool the CPU power components, a secondary HDD controller that adds one PATA and two SATA ports and a possibly better chipset cooler. The Lite has the same chipset cooler as the NFORCE4-A939.
Overclocking
With the aforementioned "strange" 3400+ CPU, I was able to hit 2640 with almost full stability at default vCore. "Almost" meaning it wouldn't go forever running stuff like Prime, but would fail or lock after a bit of time such as 15-30 minutes, but not immediately. With these results, stability is probably a vCore boost or two away. The HTT speed was 240MHz combined with the default 11x multiplier. I was able to POST at 255MHz HTT on a lowered CPU multiplier of 8x (with HT at 3x and RAM at 133MHz to take them out of the equation). 260MHz HTT would result in no POST. Interestingly the CPU recover would kick in if the CPU was pushed too high at default multiplier, but hitting 260MHz HTT resulted in no CPU recover, so I think that may be a motherboard limitation.
Something else is that sometimes CPU recover would kick in if I jumped up too high immediately. For instance I was already POSTing the board at up to 255MHz HTT, but when hitting 260MHz and it failed to POST, I had to reset CMOS by jumper. After clearing it, when setting it back up to a known working HTT the board didn't POST for a moment, and then entered CPU recover again. Saving and exiting CMOS again would get it to work fine. I tried it a few times and it did this most of the time but not all the time.
Random Thoughts:
Makes for a good budget choice for overclocking with high multiplier CPUs. I wouldn't hesitate again to buy it in such a budget combo. As for purchasing it alone, well, there's probably better choices for similar cost (except as of right now Newegg has it discounted).
One potential issue is using USB keyboards. A few Newegg reviews stated such difficulties. The NFORCE4-A939 also had USB issues, though it had to do with high speed devices such as external hard drives. This is worrysome.
If you already have this board, congratulations on owning a decent board. If you don't have it but are considering it, at regular price perhaps you should consider something else especially if you're an overclocker. As a freebie part of a combo, this made for a decent choice and indeed IMO a better choice than the Biostar alternative at the time of purchase. Note that the combo deals seem to be dead.
