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ECS want your feedback


K404

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Who's seen the Z77 boards from ECS? The AM3+? The FM1/FM2? Even the Older Clarkdale stuff.

 

The layout- What's good? What's not quite right?

 

The BIOS- what would people like to see changed?

 

What stops you from buying an ECS board? What makes you want to buy one?

 

If a friend/client asked you about ECS, what would you say?

 

 

 

Yea, i've left this short and "open," i'm not gonna direct peoples thinking.

 

 

If ECS get good feedback, the products will get better...because ECS are LISTENING and I know first-hand that is true. Please, link people to this thread. ECS users, lovers, sceptics and haters.

Edited by K404
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Maybe this is a simple case of me not paying attention to the brand but, I avoid buying there stuff simply because you dont see it, I havent heard many good things said about there newest or even older offerings. A few success stories and an attractive price point and that could change quickly. This may not be fair but I thing for them to get there name out there they are going to need a sub 150.00usd board that could perform up to speed with boards in the 200 dollar range. For instance I am looking for an z77 board with 3 way sli/xfire support at the moment and there only offering is the same price as other boards made by brands ive grown to either trust or at least know what to expect. I usually buy a few mobos for each chipset I decide to bench and its hard to take a gamble on a brand I have never benched with or used and has no big results being posted for it. If these boards are worth buying I would have thought someone would have thrown a 7ghz chip in and tried to create some hype, but they haven't which makes me wonder.

 

Just my 2 cents, and remember you asked.

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The power designs on those board look pretty weak, especially the AM3 one (only 4 phases? guess everyone didn't learn from MSI's failings... :P). I know this necessarily isn't a good measure of a board per se, but with no results or indications of their performance, I would have to pass on them for a known good board.

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The biggest problem with ECS is that they have the low end name... Everyone associates them with the low end. If they want to break back into the mainstream market, they're going to have to do it with a very aggressively priced board that is feature packed. This board has to be cheap enough and visually appealing enough to make people choose this over the household brands, i.e. Gigabyte, Asus, MSI, etc.

 

They have definitely have some boards that look appealing (the black series), but they have been priced similarly to their competitors (and sometimes even more expensive). They're not going to get customers that way...

 

I've never used an ECS board so I can't actually comment on the BIOS or software or anything like that. But why would I--there are plenty of brands that I use daily that are in the exact same market. I'll stick with those until ECS gives me a really good reason.

 

This is meant to be constructive, btw. I'm not trying to slam on the company--just being honest.

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  • Crew
What would change that thinking? :) What about layout? What would you change? :)

 

i dont know really ...

maybe heatsink color, DIMM slots color and quality of components ...

 

when you have a look at ECS mobo, do not have a good feeling, but now azrock is much better! (for example...)

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As you know I deal with ECS on a regular basis. Usually the issue is BIOS compatibility - they need to work with memory vendors to make sure they know how to deal with the newest kits. They need to analyse their markets - when MultiCore Enhancement came out they (and some other manufacturers) were blindsided. There's also an issue with support. A lot of people knock on ECS due to the large amounts of bad press they have had regarding RMAs.

 

Ideally ECS should spin out a company. Retain ECS on OEM manufacturing (which makes 70% of their sales, mostly in pan-Asia), and a new name in the consumer motherboard arena. They should hire someone who knows their competition to start designing and rearranging their R&D team to focus on what really matters, rather than a lot of marketing bumf. The Non-stop testing was a good idea for their OEM branding, but not much appeal beyond that.

 

What would help a lot is if they had a killer product at some point. Something better than the rest, even if they made a loss. But that requires a good team behind the product through design.

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i suspect ECS' issue lies in the obvious - they need a really good product, reasonably priced and they need to get them in the hands of benchers and reviewers to boost public awareness.

 

noting a few industry trends:

 

EVGA - solely existing off the work they did with x58, (just look at the abortion the z77 ftw is), but by making everything matt black the epeen kiddies are happy to a degree, (see numerous other manufacturers doing the same) but have a look at the buyer reviews on newegg or amazon. outside the results from kingpin and their classified gfx range their brand is pretty ordinary today imo.

 

DFI - was the pinnacle benchers choice for ages but serving only a niche market they eventually pulled domestic offerings.

 

ABIT & EPoX - poor support leading to 'bs brand status and bust'.

 

Gigabyte & Asus - delivering consistent products over the entire range and with a brand/reputation department that actually does a dam good job.

 

MSI - also delivering a consistent product with fairly good support epically in the budget sector. they also spend on getting the word out there.

 

as to your question on bios the guru review said it pretty well.

 

the BIOS is a confusing flurry of variables with ECS. Nothing is really logical when you want to go a for a little advanced tweaking, the functions within the BIOS often are named different compared to the competition. For example, the maximum TDP for the processor can be altered, but on the BIOS this is called: "IA Core Current Max (1/8 Amp)" with the variable 1680 staring at you right in the face. Now I can do some math, and 1680/8 is 210, we assume the TDP limited wattage is 210 Watt. But honestly we're not even sure. Now try overclocking with such confusing variables. Time after time the BIOS is where ECS does not succeed. So again my recommendation to ECS is, LOOK at the other manufacturers like MSI Gigabyte, ASUS .. they are all doing it right. and sure, I won't deny either that where ECS was two years ago is doing much better on the BIOS front. It's just not enough.

 

If a friend/client asked me about ECS, what would i say? never heard of them. (would lie because the brand over here is almost non-existent (Australia)).

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The only ECS board I've had I rather liked. That was a G31 775 board though.

 

More recently then only interaction I've had with ECS is trying to fix or at least figure out what is killing the dozen or so ECS made (so says current wisdom) Asus designed MVGs OCF has killed.

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I had the ECS Z77 golden board here for testing. The hardware is not bad and the design is actually pretty nice.

 

The biggest problem is their BIOS. On Auto the BCLK was at around 99,3 so I set it to 100 -> System didn't boot anymore.

 

2 BIOS versions later I could boot 104 BCLK and a maximum of 2133 memory. The best was if you set all the settings and saved them to a profile it reset your BIOS completely and everything was gone :D

 

They should take some Boards from MSI, GIGABYTE or ASUS and take a look at their BIOS. If ECS can get to their level they have a chance. The best board won't help if the BIOS is crap.

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would love to see 1 or 2 direct usb ports on the benchmobo(like on asus p55ws),

of course better bios and cpu+ramclocking on stripped down version for benchers without bling,bling.

 

only make few mobos and then concentrate on them.

 

thanks for listening.

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