Introduction

I would like to thank ECS for supplying the tested motherboard.

Founded in 1987, ECS, the long known "king of motherboards" is headquartered in Taiwan with operations in North America, Europe and the Pacific Rim. In June 2003, ECS was selected for two years in a row for Business Week Magazine's exclusive Information Technology 100 list (50th place in 2003 and 8th in 2002). In the category of Computer and peripherals, ECS is ranked the world's 12th and leading other Taiwanese based motherboard manufacturers.

ECS has built the RS400-A motherboard with cost in mind. Since Intel's chipsets are rather expensive they went with an ATI RADEON XPRESS200 chipset.



ATI's chipset allows some nice features like having PCI-Express x16 and AGP at the same time, you can also use either DDR1 or DDR2 memory. AGP Express is not really AGP, it is more two PCI slots put together in form of an AGP connector. This means it does not offer the special features of AGP like Sideband Adressing or Direct Memory Execute. Bandwith is also shared with all PCI devices on the bus, resulting in slower performance. Compatibility could be an issue, but in theory all AGP cards should be able to run in PCI mode.

This board looks like an upgrader's dream to facilitate the transition to DDR2 with PCI-Express x16.

Features

Specifications from Elitegroup

CPU

• LGA775 socket for latest Intel Pentium 4 / Celeron processor
• FSB 800/533 MHz
• Support Hyper-Threading Technology

CHIPSET

• ATI® RS400 & SB400
• North Bridge: ATI® RS 400
• South Bridge: ATI® SB 400

GRAPHICS

• On Chip (Radeon X300-based. 2D/3D graphic engine)

MEMORY

• Dual-channel DDRI & DDR2 memory architecture
• 2 x 184-pin DDR DIMM or 2 x 240-pin DDR2 DIMM socket support up to 2 GB
• Support DDR400/333 DDR SDRAM or DDR2 667/533/400 DDR2 SDRAM

EXPANSION SLOT

• 1 x PCI Express x16 slot
• 2 x PCI Express x1 slots
• 2 x PCI slots
• 1 x AGP Express slot

STORAGE

• Supported by SB 400
• -- 4 x Ultra DMA133/100/66/33 devices
• -- 4 x Serial ATA devices
• RAID0 & RAID1 configuration

AUDIO

• Realtek ALC655 6-Channel audio CODEC
• Compliant with AC'97 2.3 specification

LAN

• Realtek RTL8100C 10/100 Mbps Fast Ethernet Controller

REAR PANEL I/O

• 1 x PS/2 keyboard & PS/2 mouse connectors
• 4 x USB ports
• 1 x VGA port
• 1 x RJ45 LAN connector
• 1 x Parallel port (LPT1)
• 1 x Serial port (COM1)
• 1 x Audio port (Line-in, Line-out, Mic-in)

INTERNAL I/O CONNECTORS & HEADERS

• 1 x 24-pin ATX Power Supply connector
• 1 x 4-pin ATX 12V connector
• 1 x FDD connector supports two 360K~2.88MB FDDs
• 2 x IDE connectors
• 4 x Serial ATA connectors
• 2 x USB 2.0 headers support additional 4 USB Ports
• 1 x Speaker header
• 1 x SPDIF out header
• 1 x Front panel switch/LED header
• 1 x Front panel audio header
• 1 x TV out header
• CD in/ AUX in headers
• CPUFAN/PWRFAN/SYSFAN connectors

SYSTEM BIOS

• Award BIOS with 4Mb Flash ROM
• Supports Plug and Play 1.0A, APM 1.2, Multi Boot, DMI
• Supports ACPI revision 1.0 specification

FORM FACTOR

• ATX Size 305mm*244mm