The KN3SLI2 motherboard is the latest motherboard from Elitegroup, supporting AM2 CPUs combined with NVIDIA's nForce 590 SLI chipset, to give enthusiasts and gamers a potent mix of dual full-bandwidth PCI-Express GPU support. We had already tested two other 590SLI chipset based motherboards from Foxconn and Asus, so the comparison was going to prove very interesting.

The ECS KN3SLI2 has the best component color coding of all three motherboards. There is an on board fan, running at low RPMs, located in the rear IO section. Clever move from ECS. The retail package is big and has just about everything a user can ask for. ECS has also included the ECS Top-Hat Flash kit, allowing you to restore the BIOS in case your current BIOS gets corrupted!

The overall design is good, but with some minor design glitches. The most obvious is the lack of power headers near the PCI-E area. There is only one located in front of the PCI-E slots, but our VGA card's power cable wasn't long enough to reach it. There is another power header near the memory banks, which works, but you have a cable passing across half the motherboard. There is one IDE channel, located too close to the motherboard's main power connection making plugging and unplugging a headache. Not a big issue, but we would like slightly more room there. There are 5 SATAII connections available for HDD and optical storage devices, and there are two more SATAII connections for Raid configuration.

The ECS KN3SLI2 was as fast as the other 590SLI based motherboards and any differences between the 3 boards was minimal. Each motherboard was allowed to decide the "best" timings for the used memory modules so any differences, especially in games could be due to this.

Ending our presentation, this has to be one of the lower priced Nvidia 590SLI motherboard. At a retail price of US$120, users can now fully enjoy the AM2 platform. There are some "problems" with overclocking capabilities, but overall if you are looking for a low priced 590SLI motherboard, take a look at the ECS KN3SLI2. It offers good performance at a very respectable price.