My experience thus far with EliteGroup(ECS)..........

[tdank]

Just a little consumer info for you all cause work is slow and I have time to kill.

Bout two months ago I purchased a couple ECS MB's through newegg. Usually I stay with Asus or eVGA but the price was right for their 680i(PN2 SLI2+) so I figured what the hell. ECS has usually been considered a manufacturer of lower-end parts and I was intrigued they had a 680i even available. My experience thus far has been about 50/50.

First off the one that run stable has been phenomenal. Overclocked easily and runs great. Absolutely no issues other than it picking up bad timings/voltage on the RAM on initial bootup, 5-5-5-16 1.85v instead of the 4-4-4-12 2.20v it should have been. But no big deal. I would actually recommend the board for its simplicity.

The second board on the other hand(which has no overclocking or tweaking) has been a near constant headache. Since I got it running it has had this random issue with reboots and then post errors involving memory. Mainly c1 and 1d. Replaced the RAM with 3 different brands, reseated everything multiple times and it still suffered from these random reboots. So last night it got to the point where it wont stay up for more than about 30 seconds. So I started really poking around. 30 minutes into it I find that one of the holding pins on the northbridge isnt exactly snug, and no amount of pressure will get it to lock down completely. Almost like the pin is too short. So I tried booting it while applying pressure to that corner of the northbridge. BAM! Boots fines and runs smooth as long as that pressure is there. Once the pressure is realeased.....Reboot and post error. At least I have my culprit.

Spent today getting in contact with ECS and surprisingly havent run into any trouble with customer service in obtaining RMA information and a RMA request, despite reading posts to the contrary here and elsewhere. Been at work though so I dont have all the infomation to submit the form. Well see how they do once the invoice and whatnot has been sent in. I'll post with an update next week as it progresses.

Hopefully someone will find this useful or at least informative. If not, it helped me kill a few minutes.

 

[Wonderwill]

ECS is pretty awesome for newcomers in my opinion. I got a Fry's deal with a free P965T-A which I was intending to replace later. Now, 6 months later, it is still up and running fine, leaving me no reason to replace it other than bragging rights over my friends-and a strange problem with my new mouse that is easily resolved. My opinion is that ECS makes high quality boards that lack the bios features of bigger brands, but for a lot less cash.

 

[Mondoman]

... My opinion is that ECS makes high quality boards that lack the bios features of bigger brands, but for a lot less cash.

And my opinion is that ECS makes OK quality boards using third-tier chipsets and the absolute minimum number of components (e.g. capacitors) necessary, leading to boards that fail sooner and perform more poorly than "mainstream" boards. For example, my recent Fry's special ECS MB is rated to run DDR2-533 RAM, but when 2 DIMMs are installed, can only manage DDR2-400 speed without errors.