14 DAY TRIAL // AMD and its OEMs are determined to milk the new APU brands for all they are worth. There cannot be many other reasons why Elitegroup Computer Systems would name their latest platform KBN-I.
After all, KBN-I is just a disfigured version of “Kabini,” the brand used to identify AMD's new laptop-aimed accelerated processing units.
The ECS KBN-I comes with the AMD Quad Core A6-5200 APU, made from four x86 Jaguar cores, and the Radeon HD 8400 Graphics.
That means it supports DirectX 11 graphics, even if the performance won't be high enough to run all games, at least not as the best visual settings.
Then again, that's not what the mini-ITX mainboard is for anyway. Instead of gaming, it is more geared towards general computing productivity, home entertainment, and multimedia applications.
Besides the APU, or should we say AMD Kabini Quad Core SoC processor, the motherboards have two USB 3.0 ports, one PCI Express x15 slot, two SATA 6.0 Gbps ports (for HDDs/SSDs/HHDs/SSHDs), four USB 2.0 connectors, and a serial port output (COM).
HDMI and D-Sub VGA outputs are available as well, with 1080p streaming support possible on both.
ECS even talks about the possibility of populating the mini PCI Express slot with a mini PCIe card (one full-card or one half-card) for mini-TV tuner, mini-Wireless, etc.
Not only that, but ECS has bundled the KBN-I, all the motherboards in this series, with the ECS iEZ utility (eBLU BIOS Live Update Utility, eDLU Drivers Live Update Utility and the eSF Smart Fan Utility all in one), Cyberlink Media Suite, Norton anti-virus, and Muzee.
Everything runs on 25W of power, and up to 25% less energy than other low-power platforms, thanks to clock gating and APU redesign.
Finally, the 100% solid capacitors maximize the reliability and longevity of the system, as does the 9W fanless heatsink.