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Motherboard: ECS L4S5A Review :: Features
The ECS L4S5A is an ATX form factor motherboard that is built on a (Purple) 4-layer printed circuit board that measures in at 305 mm x 220 mm. The board features an mPGA ZIF Socket 478 that utilizes the Pentium 4 series of processors and supports front-side bus (FSB) speeds up to 400MHz. The L4S5A incorporates the SiS645 NB chipset that combines support for the new high-bandwidth Double Data Rate (DDR) SDRAM, and the AC97 audio Codec. SiS has done a good job recently with new chipsets for every platform that seem to be stable if not performance savvy. Supporting Pentium 4 processors from 1.4-2.4GHz means you get a good selection of CPUs to choose from in your system configuration and financial situation. For memory you get support for three-2.5V DDR SDRAM modules of (DDR266/DDR200), or two 2.5V DDR SDRAM (DDR333) modules featuring a maximum memory capacity of 3GB using DDR266/DDR200 or only 2GB when using DDR333. This should be enough memory support for just about any desktop application you should run across and you can use modules from 32MB-1GB.
Combining both the Northbridge SiS645 and SiS961 MuTIOL Media I/O the L4S5A comes at us as a mid level consumer board that has enough features to catch the eye of both home and office users. Audio is supplied via the AC97 audio Codec as stated previously and works well enough for general usage including light gaming and music reproduction such as CD audio or MP3 decoding. The AC97 Codec features an 18-Bit ADC (Analog Digital Converter) and DAC (Digital Analog Converter) as well as full duplex stereo sound. There is also a MIDI port for connecting older joysticks and game pads although most are connected via the USB port now. You would think that all boards would have the new ATA133 standard as the their ATA support, but on this one the motherboard is still clinging to the past and only offers the user support for the ATA100. For your IDE support there are two ATA100 controllers on the L4S5A supporting a maximum of four drives being used together in the two-master two-slave configuration. Remember that the slowest drive in your drive chain determines the actual speed of the IDE channel being used. Never slave a slower drive to your primary system drive, as this will kill your systems overall performance. ECS has done a decent job with producing this board and with features like the on-board Realtek 8100/B LAN adapter and the Promise (PDC20265R) RAID controller the board should hold some appeal to the budget conscious market. The board has five PCI slots, one universal 4X AGP slot and one CNR slot for your inline peripherals. Having a universal AGP slot means you can use the older 1X-2X 3.3V VGA cards as well as the latest 1.5 V 4X solutions for maximum flexibility and compatibility. So yes if you still have that 3DFX Voodoo 5500 and love it you can continue doing so using this board.
USB is slightly lagging right out of the box as the board only has two USB 1.1 connectors on the rear I/O panel. This can be increased to six USB channels by using the on-board headers and optional cable attachments. The Award BIOS features many wake up options such as (WOL) Wake On LAN and (WOR) Wake On Ring as well as a BIOS flash protection option. Hardware monitoring is also available and can be accessed through the Award BIOS. This about wraps up what the board basics are all about let us move on to the setup and performance sections of the review and see how user friendly it is as well as how it performs in the lab.
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