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ECS tips hat to X58B-A Black Series
Author: Richard SwinburnePublished: 29th October 2008
ECS' X58B-A could tempt the value market
Although, on second thoughts, maybe the association with fire is not a good one.
Anyway, ECS was keen to tell bit-tech that its Black Edition products are of higher quality than before, while not targeting the very high-end, ECS will try to appeal to the more value concious "middle-high level". At just US$260 the ECS X58B-A Black Edition should certainly appeal to more cost concious upgraders.
The board has a simple design – six phase power regulation and just one phase for north bridge and another for all six memory slots. ECS claims support for an impressive DDR3-1600 XMP, although we’ll have to see for ourselves if this works. ECS does include solid aluminium capacitors and environmentally sealed chokes, but the MOSFETs are old school and there’s no attempt for fancy power regulation like other companies are now using.
There are two Realtek Gigabit Ethernet chipsets that include the usual teaming function, as well as Realtek ALC888S High-Definition sound. The JMicron JMB362 chipset offers a couple of eSATA ports, but there is only the base level six SATA included.
There’s simple onboard power and reset buttons and clear CMOS button on the rear I/O, in addition to a two digit POST LED readout, a pair of PCI-Express 2.0 x16 slots, one x4 slot, two x1 slots and one PCI. The board is also both SLI and CrossFire multi-GPU certified as well.
It’s a decent mix but feels a little “check box.” In some ways, having simple features that work will certainly suit those looking for an uncomplicated purchase – after all, simple momentary buttons can be depressed just as well as fancy backlit ones, and its QoolTech II (Qool? yea, I died a little inside also) should work to cool the chipsets sufficiently, while remaining silent. What about six phase power regulation versus 12-16? Well, ECS still conforms to Intel’s latest VRD 11.1 spec so it should work just fine, but there might not be much overhead though.
Not everyone wants an expensive, super-OC motherboard with tons of features that they'll probably never use, and ECS is not one rated to build the best BIOSes in the world so we agree: why waste money adding extra hardware if the software isn't up to taking advantage? In a market where X58 board prices could likely be spiralling out of control, the X58A-B might possibly be worth a second look, and we always retain a cautious optimism about new products - after all, recently companies like Biostar have proven an extreme overclocker favourite. When it comes to pushing the boundaries though, the “Black” series has a long way to go before it’s anywhere near enthusiast.
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The single molex over by the PCI-E connecter is instant fail though. There must be a better way than draping a cable all the way across the mobo like that...
Looks like it, which is a welcome development.
Good spot ;)
Probably, if they sell it in the UK.
It probably will be cheap(er) then the rest of the bunch although we must see the AsRock x58 boards first. I guess for normal operations it will be good enough.
just out of curiosity: is this the first mainstream board to do this? In that case, WIN!
Too bad about the failplug by the PCI, and that Qooltech sticker just gets the kill.
Then again, i like the color scheme, and the simple approach is also nice.
I'd have to see how it performs :p
one ethernet cable to a broadband connection, the other to a laptop (either yours or a friends).
This is especially handy at university where you don't have a router/hub, only a single network port on the wall - if you want to quickly transfer stuff between your PC and a friend's or your own laptop, an ad-hoc gigE is about the fastest way of doing it.
It might not be that bad though. What you could do is run the molex down the side of your case on the case window side (since everyone has case windows), but tuck it more towards the edge (since most case windows aren't pure plexi, so they have a bit of a frame). You'd have to have some extra slack though to open/close the case enough for you to secure/unsecure the wires, but if you don't open your case too often it won't be horrible.
It might also be possible to get the cable under the motherboard, and come up near the PCIe slot, but that's really dependent on your motherboard tray and the stuff you've got plugged into the board.
I agree though, I dislike these extra power connector requirements. At least put them near an accessible edge of the board.