Review: ECS Elitegroup PN2 SLI2+ nForce 680i SLI motherboard

by Tarinder Sandhu on 4 January 2007, 08:39

Tags: Elitegroup PN2 SLI2+ nForce 680i SLI motherboard

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qahlg

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Bundle and accessories







The PN2 SLI2+'s box is suitably large, suggesting that ECS has bundled in a number of extras. We'd hope so, as the street price of around £185 is at the very high end of the enthusiast scale.



Two CDs are included in the package. The left-hand one contains an old version of InterVideo's WinCinema and Adobe's Acrobat Reader. The right-hand CD, titled Extreme, carries the usual chipset drivers, nTune (NVIDIA's comprehensive OS-based tweaking utility) and Realtek's HD-Audio drivers. It's the bare minimum required for the board, really.



The hardware extras come thick and fast. Included is a 3.5in front-mounted bracket that has 1 x 1394a FireWire and 2 x USB 2.0 connectivity. Alongside is rear-mounted bracket offering the same options and an eSATA bracket is another handy inclusion. ECS also adds in Cat5e crossover patch cable, which'll let you hook up two PCs without requiring any additional hardware.



The board's complement of 6 SATA ports are taken care by 6 associated cables, but they're not of the latching variety. Responsibly, ECS also provides 6 SATA power plugs, too.



Floppy and 80-pin IDE cables are thrown in together with an SLI bridge. It needs to be of the extra-long variety due to the spacing of the ports on the board. An ATX shield and the northbridge fan we spoke about on the previous page round it off. Pretty good stuff.