About ECS motherboards and its latest reliability on socket FM2 boards

[kg11sgbg]

How much reliable is an ECS motherboard?

How do these motherboards fare?:--->(If available in India)

A85F2A-A DELUXE(ver 1.0)
A85F2A-A GOLDEN(ver 1.0) both of which are "Black Series" Edition boards belonging to AMD Socket FM2.

Are they crap or worth something?
Rashi Peripherals Pvt. Ltd. are the official distributors in India.

 

[AcceleratorX]

ECS Black series (especially the "Golden" ones) are not bad at all, they're good reliable stable boards. The Golden ones will generally handle some tweaking but you're going to be disappointed if you bought the board for OCing, they're usually not great overclockers.

But....I think ECS' service is handled by Rashi Peripherals so Caveat Emptor.

 

[kg11sgbg]

^^@AcceleratorX ,have any idea or knowledge about the pricing of these two mobos in INR?

 

[topgear]

sme ECS mobos may be good but the RMA is handled by infamous Rashi - if you are Ok with that go ahead

 

[kg11sgbg]

Actually,@topgear my friend it was a query only.
These boards may be available in India(particularly at Kolkata) latest by March~June 2013 or so...
Rashi is almost as infamous and earned its notoriety for the service they provide...but ECS motherboards are a little cheaper than ASUS/GIGABYTE/MSI and the legion of similar motherboards.
Still I think it's much higher than the level of "Digilite" Motherboards,which are gleaming in the shelves of many Computer Hardware Shops, here at Kolkata.
ECS may be at par with BIOSTAR & AsRock motherboards.

 

[topgear]

see sometime good products earn bad reputation because of bad ASS and though ECS is good the post purchase RMA support is important IMO and indeed their quality is better than Digilite .. sometime if you can't find some product you want to get on market you better call the distributor - if they don't want to sell you directly just ask them on which shop it's available ( on Chadni Area ) - they will at-least give you some shop names and this worked for me so far.

BTW, the two mobos you've mentioned looks very good but they are not available anywhere ATM. Once the FM2 APUs are available we will see all sorts of A85 chipset based mobo flooding the market - so untill then..

 

[kg11sgbg]

^^Yes, I am waiting too...

 

[AcceleratorX]

ECS is IMO worse than Biostar and ASRock. Take ECS only as a last resort, and if you find it cheap. Biostar and ASRock are decent mid-range overclockers, ECS is just low-end stuff.....

 

[kg11sgbg]

^^ I think you are mentioning about the value end segment of ECS motherboards.
The "GOLDEN" & "DELUXE" series may not be worse or crap at all,after all if you spend Rs.7k~10k may be 12k ... the valuation of money spend suggests it is not crappy...
Because all people can not be fooled all times.

 

[d6bmg]

Even if it a golden series motherboard, if I were you, I should have avoided them altogether.

 

[AcceleratorX]

^^ I think you are mentioning about the value end segment of ECS motherboards.
The "GOLDEN" & "DELUXE" series may not be worse or crap at all,after all if you spend Rs.7k~10k may be 12k ... the valuation of money spend suggests it is not crappy...
Because all people can not be fooled all times.

ECS is a value brand and they cut costs wherever they can and whenever they can (i.e. staff for designing/testing their BIOS and final assembly line products, etc.). Their low-end boards are notorious for being unstable with buggy BIOS and horrible configuration options and quirks in general. The Golden and Black series is decent and stable. On the hardware end these boards are perfectly fine, but you may still experience quirks with respect to things like memory compatibility and BIOS setup etc.

It is for this reason I would recommend Biostar and ASRock over ECS. However, the Black series is stable enough - have seen a few using these and there were no problems as such - just don't expect it to OC well, because ECS boards are generally not built with that in mind (though the Golden series sometimes do decent OCs).

 

[topgear]

here's something interesting about ECS RMA policy :

ECS brand Motherboards are backed by a warranty that lasts 36 months for parts and 24 months for part and labor. Since the ECS Z77H2-AX Black Extreme 'Golden Board' is part of the Black Extreme series, it qualifies for the 99-Hour Replacement Service program!

can't say for sure how true this is

 

[d6bmg]

When one can get mobo from gigabyte, and asus at the same cost, then there is no point of buying products of brand like ECS, no matter how much VFM (I doubt it) they are.

 

[kg11sgbg]

^^Honouring your views d6bmg,I think the GOLDEN/DELUXE "Black Series" of motherboards from ECS,are much cheaper than ASUS/GIGABYTE/MSi when it comes to compare about different variety of components.
The same specs. of GOLDEN/DELUXE from ECS when found at GIGABYTE/ASUS or MSI costs much higher when compared to ECS motherboards.
At least I don't think ECS PREMIUM motherboards are utterly crap "NOWADAYS"...may be I am wrong.
ECS are more or less at par with BIOSTAR & ASROCK motherboards.
The only thing of concern is the ASS and RMA done by the notorious "RASHI PERIPHERALS" as topgear has already pointed.

 

[AcceleratorX]

ECS' Golden Series is definitely not "utter crap" and their Black series is not bad either from a hardware perspective. But I repeat, their BIOS/UEFI has quirks and bugs especially at release, BIOS updates are slow and this severely limits the OC potential of these products. They're usually pretty decent and stable out of the box and after a few BIOS updates are passably as good as other motherboards in that price range but you must have the patience to work around little things and niggles in setting up the board.

On the whole I'd still recommend an ASRock or Biostar over ECS to be honest. And yes ECS boards usually have a lot of features for the price, but it's the little things you don't get in the board - for e.g. nearly all Asus boards come with powerful surge protection circuitry and the MemOK automatic memory tuner for maximal RAM compatibility, and you're rarely going to find such features in an ASRock, Biostar or ECS board (sometimes ASRock has similar features though). Of course these things are moot if you have clean power and a good UPS at home. And memory compatibility is always luck of the draw, though things like MemOK are a saviour when you install an incompatible module. Note that usually you will not run into such issues, so it may or may not be a big deal for you.

 

[kg11sgbg]

^^ Thanks AcceleratorX for such definite and knowledgeable info. you are sharing with us.
You are providing an indepth knowledge about the ECS motherboards.

I myself am using now BIOSTAR TA785GE 128M socket AM2+ motherboard.
I AM VERY MUCH SATISFIED WITH THIS BOARD.
I have no intentions of buying an ECS board,I only wanted to know the nature of ECS boards in its perspective as a comparative study along with other manufacturers.

In fact if I intend to buy a socket FM2 motherboard , I shall definitely go for BIOSTAR or AsRock as my PRIMARY choice,and then MSI.
Of course I shall purchase the A85 chipsets one...

 

[d6bmg]

For what price you are getting those ECS boards?
All that matters isn't getting more features, as at the end you are going to use most of them, but the important thing is to get a board , which have the features that you need and above all the board is reliable.
That's all I want to say.

 

[topgear]

^^ Thanks AcceleratorX for such definite and knowledgeable info. you are sharing with us.
You are providing an indepth knowledge about the ECS motherboards.

I myself am using now BIOSTAR TA785GE 128M socket AM2+ motherboard.
I AM VERY MUCH SATISFIED WITH THIS BOARD.
I have no intentions of buying an ECS board,I only wanted to know the nature of ECS boards in its perspective as a comparative study along with other manufacturers.

In fact if I intend to buy a socket FM2 motherboard , I shall definitely go for BIOSTAR or AsRock as my PRIMARY choice,and then MSI.
Of course I shall purchase the A85 chipsets one...

I don't think they make good mobos for AMD cpus ( VRM Issue ).

 

[kg11sgbg]

^^ In that case you suggest for ASUS/GIGABYTE/MSI motherboards?
Socket AMD FM2.

 

[AcceleratorX]

Thing is I guess ECS will get better over time as they have started manufacturing boards for Asus and surely they will learn a thing or two by studying those designs.....but their problem is not their hardware (they have improved on the quality front), it's their software and BIOS that holds them back at this point.

@topgear: MSI's newer boards don't have the exploding VRM issues, they worked around it by imposing voltage and thermal limits. The consequence is that these boards now have limited OC options compared to Biostar/ASRock as the VRM quality itself hasn't really improved.

ECS' golden boards usually come with a few bells and whistles as well as a very fancy box so they may be priced a bit higher but the black series should be easily in Biostar's range.