InsaneTek

Over the past few years, ECS has built up a reputation of producing extremely affordable motherboards.  In all of my years of experience, ECS motherboards have been quite adequate for basic computing use.  However, they have never excelled in the overclocking department and carry a reputation as a poor overclocker.  Often times, consumers would have trouble running the motherboard stably while tinkering with the limited adjustments in the BIOS. We last encountered an ECS motherboard when reviewing the RS480-M, based on the ATI XPRESS200 chipset.  Surprisingly, the motherboard overclocked very well, even with the limited BIOS options. 

I was very fortunate to be invited to an ECS editor's event held in San Jose, California.  There, ECS showed off their upcoming products and gave presentations on how they planned to address the needs of the enthusiast.  They dubbed themselves the "new ECS."  Their showcase of products was definitely a crucial first step in improving ECS's reputation in the enthusiast crowd.  At the time of the event, they were already preparing to mass release their Crossfire motherboard for both the AMD and Intel platforms.  Also displayed at the event was their Nvidia SLI solution--the KN1 SLI Extreme.