A Closer Look:

    While most companies made their foray into, and subsequently figured out the enthusiast edge of marketing a few years back, ECS’ box art shows that they’re rather new to the game. In the spirit of manifesting their mantra “Black is Power”, the first thing that potential buyers are going to see is a big, badass dragon, riding on the motherboard’s tribal symbol framed name. Perhaps almost superfluously, the small “Gamer’s Buy” sticker sits off to the right, but I think I know just what they’re looking at. While cool boxes are sometimes nice to see, the rest of the market has since moved on to more minimalist designs, focusing on showcasing what the motherboard can do, rather than relying on imagery which looks almost as if it’s been lifted from a Magic: The Gathering collectable card.

The Box

Box Rear

But I digress, a book is not only judged on the merit of its cover. While the rear of the box might have a small picture of the motherboard on hand, what we really want lurks just underneath the surface, and past the rather small bundle. A bundle small enough that it begs the question – where did it all go? But a generation ago, ECS’ extreme motherboards went so far as to include an Ethernet cable, and around the same price point too. Call me crazy, but an Extreme series motherboard with a black PCB, and no flashing lights – that would be a perfect match.

Slim Pickins

An Ariel View

The Artistic Shot

... is power.

Onto the motherboard itself; giving this potential beast a quick once over, there’s no glaring oversights in layout to be spotted; but who am I to paraphrase, it’s time for a tour of the grounds. The top left of the motherboard is really where the show starts – and unfortunately, the layout of the power circuitry, while far enough away from the processor, and leaves the user unable to fit a heatsink, should they choose to help these circuits dissipate the heat of powering a quad-core processor more easily. The area surrounding the socket is mostly free of any pesky components which would stop the user from mounting larger coolers – as proven by the simple installation of my Thermalright Ultra Extreme heatsink.

CPU Area

Tribal NB HSF

P45 Pictured.

Gratuitous Die Shot.

The layout around the memory slots is also pretty clear, and users should find no problems using taller or wider memory modules, nor will they need to worry about having difficulty getting at the ATX power connector.  Perhaps the only qualm with the connector placed in this location, however, is that it may become difficult to get at in the more cramped of cases, but that is the fault of the chassis manufacturer, not ECS.

Farther down the motherboard is an area which received a mixed reception from me – the 6 SATA2 ports are lined up and completely free of obstructions, and run nicely along the edge of the motherboard, as do the 3 USB 2.0 headers. Additionally featured, the color coded power and reset buttons will make working with the system out of the box a breeze, but may result in some unintended restarts due to ham handed users beaning a button with a fan, or SATA connector while the system is at full tilt. The only real disappointment here is the tiny heatsink utilized to cool the Southbridge, which was attached via a tacky, pink thermal pad – which I doubt would have been very effective.

Southbridge

Power/Reset

TIM, you're useless.

Cleaned ICH10.

One thing I especially liked to the layout of the motherboard is the layout of the expansion slots. With the PCI interface slowly becoming stalwart, the placement of its replacement connectors – those being the PCI-E x1 interface, couldn’t be better. Thanks to this, users will be able to fit in two PCI-E and one PCI card, even with full length, dual slot coolers – which means that wireless, digital video and high quality audio can be packed into your system, alongside a pair of monstrous dual GPU cards.

Ruby Red x16s

Jmicron Controller

ICS PLL Chip

Realtek HD Audio

The rear I/O panel of this motherboard is a bit of a mixed bag – the nice, large gap overtop of the serial port would have been perfect for the exhaust which was once on the Extreme motherboards, but this is near irrelevant. The layout and selection of connectors here is satisfactory, apart from the disappointing lack of firewire. Still; users should have no issues connecting permanent devices – as 6 USB are present, as well as finding a place for that external drive.

I/O Area

Back in Black

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