Conclusion:

The ECS PN2-SLI2+ (V1.0) nForce 680i SLI Motherboard is indeed a computing enthusiast's board. If you plan on overclocking an Intel powered system in the near future, I recommend this motherboard. This board comes packed with many notable features; SLI, Gigabit LAN, dual channel DDR2 800, and the list goes on and on. When it came to installing hardware and setting up this system, I did not run into any issues. Overclocking yielded performance increases up to approximately 50% in some tests without sacrificing system stability.


A search of PriceGrabber reveals this motherboard is currently available at four online retailers, with the lowest price being $235 shipped from Newegg.com. This is not a cheap board, but the enthusiast features covered in this review should have implied that the price tag would be up there. However, taking a look at other nForce 680i based boards shows the price on ECS's offering is rather competitive.

If you can take advantage of the integrated features on this motherboard (SLI, Gigabit LAN, dual channel DDR2) and are ready to step-up to the performance of an Intel Core 2 Duo processor, you should strongly consider the ECS PN2-SLI2+ (V1.0) nForce 680i SLI for your next motherboard purchase.

Considering all of the high quality included features, strong performance, and overclocking ability, the PN2-SLI2+ earns the Bigbruin.com "Recommended" and "Gaming Approved" awards.


Pros:

» Packed with features: SLI, SATA2, Onboard RAID controller
» LED Diagnostic display simplifies troubleshooting
» Stable when overclocked, lots of tweaking flexibility

Cons:

» Southbridge could use an active cooling solution
» Only one IDE port, avoiding IDE hard drives is practically a must
» Northbridge fan should come pre-installed from the factory

Special thanks to ECS for providing the ECS PN2-SLI2+ (V1.0) nForce 680i SLI Motherboard to Bigbruin.com for review!