ECS KN1 SLI Extreme Motherboard

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Nicholas Hart
Kurtis
ECS
Feb. 7, 2006

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Introduction

Elitegroup Computer Systems was started in 1987 and has grown to be one of the largest motherboard manufacturers, with the capability to produce 2.5million motherboards per month. Yet only a few years ago they were a virtual unknown for the average do-it-yourself (DIY) techie. That's because they catered to the OEM market, mainly providing boards for companies such as IBM and Compaq. Only in these last few years have they branched out into making retail motherboards, graphic cards and desktop systems.

They created quite a splash with the release of the PF88 motherboard which supported Intel CPUs natively with the ability to accommodate an AMD Athlon64 with an appropriate daughter card. Obviously the market for this type of system is limited, but it serves as a great publicity piece and may have been done more to show their engineering talent than to serve as an actual product. Regardless of how useful the board may be, you can't help but be impressed by it.

ECS' newest mainstream venture is their "Extreme' line of motherboards that sport all the features you would expect from a top-of-the-line gaming system. The board I will be covering today is the KN1 SLI Extreme and, as the name would suggest, it is a SLI capable board with the nForce 4 Ultra SLI chipset and a few unique features not found on other boards. But is it EXTREME? Well I can't really answer that, maybe you don't think its extreme until it cooks the toast and butters it and in that case, no its not. But I can run some benchmarks and use the board for a while and tell you what I think! So if that's enough for you, keep reading.

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Page 1 of 8

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Page 1: Introduction
Page 2: Board Layout
Page 3: Bundles and Extras
Page 4: Software (and fun with Tech Support)
Page 5: Test Setup and Synthetic Benchmarks
Page 6: Real-World Benchmarks
Page 7: Overclocking
Page 8: Conclusion

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