Review: ECS NF650iSLIT-A motherboard

A mainstream motherboard with good features and performance

Price: £74

Manufacturer: ECS

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Verdict

Pros: Wide range of voltage and clock tweaking options; good selection of ports
Cons: Slower PCI Express lanes in SLI setups
Overall: An ideal motherboard for enthusiasts on a limited budget

Emil Larsen, Personal Computer World 20 Mar 2007

The new ECS NF650iSLIT-A motherboard is based on Nvidia's middle of the road 650i chipset.

This is closely related to Nvidia's 680i chipset, which is widely regarded as the best chipset for overclocking Intel processors.

The board sports an aluminium heatsink on the Southbridge and a small and fairly quiet fan on the Northbridge. One of the biggest differences between the 650i and 680i-based boards is that the 650i will only provide eight PCI Express lanes per card in SLI mode, slower than the 16 lanes per card the 680i can manage.

If you only plug one graphics card in you'll get a full 16 lanes and no performance hit. But for all intents and purposes, the difference between 8 and 16 PCI Express lanes is minimal at present.

Motherboards based on the 650i chipset also have a PCI Express slot lopped off compared to 680is, so you can't have three graphics cards.

There are four external USB sockets (internal pins enable four more if required). Full 7.1 audio output and four 3Gbits/sec Serial ATA ports make it an all-rounder in terms of features.

The 650i SLI doesn't officially support a 1,333MHz front side bus (FSB), however, after digging through the slightly clumsy ECS bios we managed to successfully overclock to this - theoretically it can go far beyond 1,333MHz. The Ram can also be overclocked to 1,400MHz.

During testing, performance was a tiny bit slower than 975X and 680i motherboards in Sysmark 2004 SE, scoring 342. Check our benchmark site for more test results.

For the vast majority of PC users looking to build a single graphics card, single CPU system, this motherboard is ideal. At £74, it carries a lot of the 680i's features without the high price tag. Additionally this ECS board is slightly cheaper than other 650i motherboards.

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