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Posted by
Toby
Crundwell on March 20, 2002
Company: EliteGroup
Product: L4S5A
Socket 478 motherboard
Look
for the lowest motherboard
prices.
Something everybody likes to get are
extras. This is exactly what the board does not come with. No
extra audio I/O, no extra USB ports, not even a second
serial port. Yet it does, to its credit, have integrated
10/100 Ethernet capability through its RJ45 port, something
I used constantly and found very useful. Nevertheless I'm
impressed by what ECS have managed to do. They've put
together a very fast board on a tight budget.
The L4S5A comes packed just with the
basic stuff you could say, but it redeems itself on the
price to performance ratio. The list price for this board is
$92 so you should be able to find it for a bit less than
that, overall it is a great budget board. As a side note,
using our pricegrabber search we found similarly equipped
ECS P4 motherboards selling for less
than $80. With PC2700 support, its a good board for
those who want a fast P4 system on the cheap. Some would
argue that for a fast cheap system AMD should be employed,
and as far as the necessity of buying a new power supply
goes, that could be true, but the CPUs aren't
particularly overpriced when compared with Athlon XPs.
As usual, some would buy the L4S5A just
on the color scheme, having a "dashing" oriental
purple PCB and "stunning" sky blue DIMM slots.
Personally, I would have rather seen extra USB ports. The
main troubles I had with the board, hardware lockups, I
would hope to be a one-off, and faulty memory was suggested
as a cause of this, given I had some similar problems with
another SiS 645 motherboard.
Pros:
Cons:
Company: EliteGroup
Product: L4S5A
Socket 478 motherboard
Look
for the lowest motherboard
prices.
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