Foxconn's 'Dreadnought 790i Ultra' coming up

Foxconn has been directing itself towards overclockers and gamers with its new Quantum Force motherboard line-up. The names have clearly been inspired by the navy, because after the nForce 780a based Destroyer, Foxconn now introduces the 'Dreadnought', a board based on nVidia's more expensive 790i Ultra chipset. 

Where the Destroyer stands out with its four PCI-Express 16x slots, the Dreadnought has a unique chipset cooling and triple-SLI functionality. We saw a raw version of the chipset cooling on VR-Zone's forum in December. Overclocker Shamino was pleased with the new cooling, because it could handle both watercooling and liquid nitrogen. The supplied cooling is all an overclocker needs, Foxconn packs a matching fan, watercooling lid and even an LN2 tube with the Dreadnought board.

The board supports all socket 775 Intel processors, including the 45nm and the 1600MHz FSB models. The four DDR3 memory slots can handle up to 8GB of DDR3 memory with a clockspeed of max 2000MHz. Apart from the three PCI-Express 16x slots for triple-SLI, there are also two PCI and two PCI-E 1x slots for additional cards. There are also six SATA ports and one IDE connector present on the motherboard. 

The I/O panel has two eSATA ports, 6x USB, two Gigabit LAN ports and a FireWire connector. The onboard audiochip supports 7.1 audio through analog jacks as well as through a coaxial and optic digital output. 

The creators of the board kept the overclockers in mind, it features a double BIOS and comes with a plastic tray for motherboards that stand on the table or on a box. There is also an additional fan in the box which can be attached to the graphics cards. According to Foxconn this offers a big advantage when you are running a multi-GPU setup. 

Left: External motherboard tray for tabletop setup  - Right: Additional graphics card fan

The Dreadnought has a recommended price of $399,- and will be available later this month. 

Tags: tabletpc overclocking ddr3 sata USB firewire esata bios nforce fsb sli

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