ECS L4S8A (SiS 648): Value P4 Performance

ECS L4S8A: Board Layout

The ECS L4S8A had only a decent layout, with a good amount of issues we'd like to point out.

ECS positions the ATX (20-pin) connector on the left side of the motherboard. This isn't the best place to locate the ATX connector because it becomes very difficult to uninstall the HSF without having to unhook the ATX connector first because of the thick ATX lines. Most motherboard manufacturers like to ignore the ease of installation aspect of their design unfortunately.

The way the CPU fan header is positioned is also not so ideal and thus quite annoying.

The fan header is located next to two capacitors, one large one and very tiny one, as well as very close to the HSF clamps. This causes a problem if we were to unhook the CPU fan line, as it makes it quite the task to fit your fingers in there without having to tug on the HSF fan wires. This problem is very similar to what we experienced with MSI's 845PE Max2-FIR motherboard.

The ATX12V connector is yet another item that isn't positioned properly. The ATX12V connector is located on the left-hand side of the motherboard, right next to the ATX connector. The reason we don't like this positioning is because the ATX12V line is directly in the path of uninstalling the HSF, meaning you have to unhook the ATX12V line first. The best location for the ATX12V connector is at the very top of the right-hand side of the motherboard, above the DIMM slots. This is also the best place for the ATX connector.

Luckily enough, ECS places the Primary/Secondary IDE connectors above the middle right-hand portion of the motherboard. By doing this, it won't make it difficult for the IDE cables to reach to the uppermost bays of a full-sized ATX case. In addition, there's no chance that the IDE cables will get tangled up with your video card in most cases.

Like most motherboard manufacturers, ECS places the DIMM connectors very close to where your video card would be. By doing this, ECS makes it difficult for you to install/uninstall any memory with your video card installed. Instead, you have to uninstall the video card to install/uninstall any memory (although it does depend on the length of your video card; our test bed's GF4 Ti 4600 was long enough to make this a problem).

Again similar to the MSI 845PE Max2-FIR, ECS places another tiny capacitor in the way of something, this time right next to the AGP lever.

This positioning made it a bit difficult to uninstall the video card without touching the capacitor, although we didn't have to do any dangerous bending this time as we were forced to do with MSI's 845PE board.

The rest of ECS's layout choices aren't too spectacular either. There are two FireWire headers just above the middle PCI slot. By putting the FireWire headers here, ECS brings the potential in for the FireWire bracket wires to get tangled up with other PCI cards that you may install, which isn't good for installation (and even air flow in some ways). The locations of the two USB 2.0 headers aren't much better either. The USB headers are placed very poorly, right smack in the middle of the motherboard just below the AGP 8X slot. If you were to install multiple USB and FireWire brackets on this board, it would be hell to deal with all the wires that would clutter up your case.