ECS N2U400-A nForce2 Mainboard Review (1)
Bluetooth 2 Jan 2004

Introduction

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ECS is well known for its low costs mainboards. Lately they have been evolving into a high end manufacturer with the introduction of Photon series of mainboards which has a newer packaging. Although ECS is moving towards the higher end market, they have not forgotten users who prefer a lower cost mainboard that does the job well.

Late last year, we were surprised that ECS released this mainboard - ECS N2U400-A. It was quite a surprise as ECS has not released any NF2 mainboards before. After some initial investigations, I was told that this board will only appear in certain markets.

We tried our best to get the board and at last we found it in the retail market. We got hold of one and did this test for our readers who have requested a review of it since its launch date back in late 2003. Yes I know it might be a bit late, but I do this to fulfilled my promise to our readers.

At first glance, ECS N2U400-A looks like any plain old ECS boards we have seen so far. This board is extremely clear cut with the Socket A (with 4 mounting holes around it) located at the right hand corner of the mainboard. The North Bridge is mounted with a heatsink using double sided tape.  The south bridge is a MCP (without -T). 3 RAM slots for Dual Channel DDR support. The BIOS is soldered onto the board which is not really a good idea because you would end up a dead board if you flash the BIOS wrongly.

The board comes with 6 channel audio supported using Cmedia 9379 Codec. The on board LAN is supported by the on board VIA VT6103L chipset. The rear panel has connectors for 1 x PS/2 keyboard & PS/2 mouse connectors 4 x USB ports, 1 x RJ45 LAN connector, 1 x Parallel port (LPT1), 1 x Serial port (COM1), 1 x Audio ports (Line-in, Line-out, Mic-in).

It is surprising as well to find that this board comes with 1 x 20-pin ATX Power Supply Connector & 4-pin 12V Connector. This is especially important for stability for high powered CPUs.

Lets check out the gallery for more photos and BIOS features of this board.

 

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Specifications

Special Features FSB 400 Dual Channel DDR400 AGP 8X 6 Channel Audio Color Map 10/100 LAN ATA133

CPU Socket 462 for AMD K7 Athlon XP/ Athlon/ Duron processor FSB 400/ 333/ 266/ 200 MHz CHIPSET nVIDIA nForce2 Ultra400 & MCP North Bridge: nVIDIA nForce2 Ultra 400 South Bridge: MCP MEMORY Dual-channel DDR memory architecture 3 x184-pin DDR DIMM socket support up to 3 GB Support DDR400/333/266/200 2.5V DDR SDRAM EXPANSION SLOT 1 x AGP 8X/4X slot 5 x PCI slots STORAGE Support by MCP 4 x Ultra DMA133/100/66 devices   AUDIO C-Media CMI9739A 6-channel audio CODEC Compliant with AC'97 2.2 specification LAN VIA VT6103L 10/100 Mbps Fast Ethernet PHY REAR PANEL I/O 1 x PS/2 keyboard & PS/2 mouse connectors 4 x USB ports 1 x RJ45 LAN connector 1 x Parallel port (LPT1) 1 x Serial port (COM1) 1 x Audio ports (Line-in, Line-out, Mic-in) INTERNAL I/O CONNECTORS & HEADERS 1 x 20-pin ATX Power Supply Connector & 4-pin 12V Connector 1 x Floppy connector supports 360K~2.88M Bytes, 3 Mode FDDs or LS120 2 x IDE connectors 1 x Speaker header 1 x USB 2.0 header support additional 2 USB ports 1 x USB card reader header 1 x SPDIF out header 1 x Front panel switch/LED header 1 x Front panel audio header CD in header CPUFAN/PWRFAN connectors SYSTEM BIOS Award BIOS with 2Mb Flash ROM Supports Plug and Play 1.0A, APM 1.2, Muli Boot, DMI Full Support for ACPI revision 1.0 specification FORM FACTOR ATX Form Factor, 305*244mm

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