ECS RS480-M

[ChineseDemocracyGNR]

http://www.ecs.com.tw/ECSWeb/Products/P...il.aspx?DetailID=506&MenuID=90&LanID=0

This one has basic overclocking options, not much voltage but at least you can bump the "FSB". Downside is only 2 DIMM slots.

 

[asintu]

i want reviews goddamnit

 

[The Pentium Guy]

I heard ECS wasn't that reliable of a company

 

[Peter]

So that's why they're doing so much large-volume OEM business, huh?

Let's not go down THAT path of hearsay FUD-slinging YET AGAIN.

 

[StormRider]

Why are ATI based motherboards always in the mATX form factor? I want a regular ATX form factor...

 

[Peter]

Simple - integrated-VGA setups target the low cost OEM market, and fullsize cases aren't what these customers want.

 

[tcsenter]

Chaintech has in the past been good for releasing mATX boards built on non-IGP chipsets; KT266A, KT400A, nForce2 Ultra 400, PT800, et. al.

 

[wayne2456]

Originally posted by: ChineseDemocracyGNR
http://www.ecs.com.tw/ECSWeb/Products/P...il.aspx?DetailID=506&MenuID=90&LanID=0

This one has basic overclocking options, not much voltage but at least you can bump the "FSB". Downside is only 2 DIMM slots.

Did you buy it??

 

[hans007]

i bought this board. i havent gotten it entirely setup.


on my winchester 3000+ vcore voltage goes up to 1.55 volts, and vdimm voltage goes up to 2.7 volts
it also can adjust multiplier. i personally have never had a problem with an ECS board. they do in fact manufacture some of Asus , asrock and abit boards at their factories.

 

[crucibelle]

hans,

Are you able to set the 1T/2T RAM timing on this board?

 

[hans007]

Originally posted by: crucibelle
hans,

Are you able to set the 1T/2T RAM timing on this board?

no you cant. it can only set CAS latency. i am hoping it just sets mine to 1T as that is what the SPD timing says, but no it cant set 1T/2T timing in the memory menu. it can only set memclock and CL.

 

[mechBgon]

What's your intended usage pattern, are you going to use the onboard video?

 

[imported_Kensai]

Mmm. I like the MSI board, I just want a BIOS update with OC features.

 

[hans007]

i've had the MSI board, and i seriously doubt they will ever have O/C features. stock for stock, the ECS is better than the MSI. the msi only runs at 199bus which is yet another drawback for it. its only real positives are it has 4 ram slots, tv out (optional on ecs) and better audio outputs (spdif etc)

i even use 1T ram on the msi board, and it would not run it at 1T no matter what. Thats why i switched to this board. I currently am using an x700pro 128mb with my board, but i tend to swap video cards a lot so onboard video is something i tend to want, for inbetween cards (especially in between games if im not gaming)

 

[IEC]

Originally posted by: The Pentium Guy
I heard ECS wasn't that reliable of a company

I've heard Intel processors overheat. :disgust:

ECS is a Tier 1 motherboard manufacturer. They make a lot of OEM boards. BTW, for those people wondering about availability of this potentially good HTPC motherboard...

Newegg has them

 

[hans007]

Originally posted by: ariafrost

Originally posted by: The Pentium Guy
I heard ECS wasn't that reliable of a company

I've heard Intel processors overheat. :disgust:

ECS is a Tier 1 motherboard manufacturer. They make a lot of OEM boards. BTW, for those people wondering about availability of this potentially good HTPC motherboard...

Newegg has them

thats where i got it.

ecs is such a large company, that they often build other companies motherboard for them. there was an article on anands with a tour of ecs factory, where they were building abit boards.


http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=1891&p=4
(last paragraph)

 

[cbehnken]

Originally posted by: hans007

Originally posted by: ariafrost

Originally posted by: The Pentium Guy
I heard ECS wasn't that reliable of a company

I've heard Intel processors overheat. :disgust:

ECS is a Tier 1 motherboard manufacturer. They make a lot of OEM boards. BTW, for those people wondering about availability of this potentially good HTPC motherboard...

Newegg has them

thats where i got it.

ecs is such a large company, that they often build other companies motherboard for them. there was an article on anands with a tour of ecs factory, where they were building abit boards.


http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=1891&p=4
(last paragraph)

Yet another reason not to buy Abit anymore.

You guys are funny. ECS is by far the worst motherboard manufacturer in the world, perhaps in the entire galaxy.

No one remembers the KS75a? Everyone machine built with these I've seen ends up having 6 or 7 burst caps.

Hans007 : You don't like MSI boards? No O/C ability??! Right...tell that to everyone with a K8N Neo or Neo 2

 

[justly]

Originally posted by: cbehnken

You guys are funny. ECS is by far the worst motherboard manufacturer in the world, perhaps in the entire galaxy.

Ever heard of Amptron?

No one remembers the KS75a? Everyone machine built with these I've seen ends up having 6 or 7 burst caps.

Of course I remember, my wife has two of them, and the one sitting right across from me has been running almost 24/7/365 for just under 3 years with no problems (I even checked the caps, to humor you) and guess what not one burst or even buldging cap.

Hans007 : You don't like MSI boards? No O/C ability??! Right...tell that to everyone with a K8N Neo or Neo 2

My neighbors sister had to buy a new computer because more than half of the caps on her MSI motherboard had burst so maybe I should consider MSI "the worst motherboard manufacturer in the world, perhaps in the entire galaxy".

BTW cbehnken have a look at this thread

 

[hans007]

Originally posted by: cbehnken

Originally posted by: hans007

Originally posted by: ariafrost

Originally posted by: The Pentium Guy
I heard ECS wasn't that reliable of a company

I've heard Intel processors overheat. :disgust:

ECS is a Tier 1 motherboard manufacturer. They make a lot of OEM boards. BTW, for those people wondering about availability of this potentially good HTPC motherboard...

Newegg has them

thats where i got it.

ecs is such a large company, that they often build other companies motherboard for them. there was an article on anands with a tour of ecs factory, where they were building abit boards.


http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=1891&p=4
(last paragraph)

Yet another reason not to buy Abit anymore.

You guys are funny. ECS is by far the worst motherboard manufacturer in the world, perhaps in the entire galaxy.

No one remembers the KS75a? Everyone machine built with these I've seen ends up having 6 or 7 burst caps.

Hans007 : You don't like MSI boards? No O/C ability??! Right...tell that to everyone with a K8N Neo or Neo 2

i'ive had several good msi boards. the rs480 microATX one just is not very good. their other boards seem great (last one i had was an MSI k7n2 nforce2 igp and it was great) . their rs480 baord was originally designed for compaq (it is in some of their systems) and well, its just got too many bad points (no vcore, no vdimm, no multiplier, no 1T support, 199mhz bus that is underclocked, no ram controls, etc) .


i'd have to say in my personal experience the worst boards i've had were made by abit and chaintech. but the abit was an abit px5 with an original k6. so thats a long time ago. companies can easily turn it around (dfi is now lauded all over the place, when they were just a el cheapo brand a few years ago). this isnt like samurai sword making or something they are motherboards.

 

[cbehnken]

Originally posted by: justly

Originally posted by: cbehnken

You guys are funny. ECS is by far the worst motherboard manufacturer in the world, perhaps in the entire galaxy.

Ever heard of Amptron?

No one remembers the KS75a? Everyone machine built with these I've seen ends up having 6 or 7 burst caps.

Of course I remember, my wife has two of them, and the one sitting right across from me has been running almost 24/7/365 for just under 3 years with no problems (I even checked the caps, to humor you) and guess what not one burst or even buldging cap.

Hans007 : You don't like MSI boards? No O/C ability??! Right...tell that to everyone with a K8N Neo or Neo 2

My neighbors sister had to buy a new computer because more than half of the caps on her MSI motherboard had burst so maybe I should consider MSI "the worst motherboard manufacturer in the world, perhaps in the entire galaxy".

BTW cbehnken have a look at this thread

And your link is supposed to prove something?
So, if MSI builds one motherboard with defects then they are a bad company?

Go ahead and keep liking your ECS with it's Chinese/Taiwanese capacitors and other low end components.

I've personally seen over twenty fail. Almost every AMD Athlon XP system I've seen that is rebooting itself has an ECS motherboard in it.

 

[justly]

Originally posted by: cbehnken

And your link is supposed to prove something?

It doesn't prove anything, just like your opinion about ESC doesn't prove anything.
I could have done a search for MSI + RMA and posted a link to two full pages of threads. I was just pointing out that no companies products are exempt from problems no matter how much they are liked by the enthusiast crowd.

So, if MSI builds one motherboard with defects then they are a bad company?

So you think the MSI board that I saw with all those burst caps was a fluke, and the only MSI board that ever had a defect? that sounds like a fanboy responce to me.

Go ahead and keep liking your ECS with it's Chinese/Taiwanese capacitors and other low end components.

I like wat works, and why should I care where the caps are made as long as they work. I sure hope that you aren't going to tell me the caps on MSI boards are any better after what I saw.

I've personally seen over twenty fail. Almost every AMD Athlon XP system I've seen that is rebooting itself has an ECS motherboard in it.

ECS is a no frills economy board that often get put in systems with low quality power supplies, memory ect. ect., so I wouldn't be surprised that you have seen more of them have problems (like rebooting). I bet you find a cheap power supply in all those "rebooting" ECS systems too.

 

[cbehnken]

Originally posted by: justly

Originally posted by: cbehnken

And your link is supposed to prove something?

It doesn't prove anything, just like your opinion about ESC doesn't prove anything.
I could have done a search for MSI + RMA and posted a link to two full pages of threads. I was just pointing out that no companies products are exempt from problems no matter how much they are liked by the enthusiast crowd.

So, if MSI builds one motherboard with defects then they are a bad company?

So you think the MSI board that I saw with all those burst caps was a fluke, and the only MSI board that ever had a defect? that sounds like a fanboy responce to me.

Go ahead and keep liking your ECS with it's Chinese/Taiwanese capacitors and other low end components.

I like wat works, and why should I care where the caps are made as long as they work. I sure hope that you aren't going to tell me the caps on MSI boards are any better after what I saw.

I've personally seen over twenty fail. Almost every AMD Athlon XP system I've seen that is rebooting itself has an ECS motherboard in it.

ECS is a no frills economy board that often get put in systems with low quality power supplies, memory ect. ect., so I wouldn't be surprised that you have seen more of them have problems (like rebooting). I bet you find a cheap power supply in all those "rebooting" ECS systems too.

Fanboy? I run a DFI.

Believe me, a high quality psu isn't going to make up for ECS using capacitors with defective electrolyte solution.

I cannot believe you are arguing that ECS is a better brand than MSI. I'll post a poll and we'll see what the general opinion is.

 

[Steve]

ECS weren't the only company to have bad caps. MSI, Asus, Abit, Gigabyte, and others all suffered from that problem.

 

[osan0001]

I decided to try out the ECS RS480-M since it was only $83 shipped and I had an extra 3000+ Winny laying around after ordering a venice for my DFI Ultra D. The board does have overclocking ability, but not too much. I also had trouble with my Winbond BH-5 memory. My Mushkin Level II PC3500 would not boot in it. My Kingston HyperX PC3000 would though, most likely due to the SPD timings being looser. I would suggest downloading the manual to get the basic outline of the options, but I will list the values that are not in there:

Memclock index value(MHz): 200, 166, 133, 100
CAS#latency(Tcl): 2.0, 2.5, and 3.0

LDT Bus Frequency: 1 GHz, 800 MHz, 600MHz, 400 MHz, 200 MHz

Async GFX Clock: 200 MHz, 250 MHz, 300MHZ, and 350 MHz

Hammer Fid control: All multipliers available to the processor. Example, my Winny 3000+, all up to 9x

Hammer Vid control: Up to 1.55 Volts
CPU Clock: 200-250 MHz
Dimm Voltage Adjust: Up to 2.7 Volts

I need to play around with it some more, but the so far the Winbond based stuff does not seem to work very good in it and that is all that I have (5.5 GB UTT CH-5, BH-5) besides 2*256 MB Apacer TCCC. I am currently testing it at 233 MHz which seems to be where my TCCC maxes out. I think it is a decent board, and should hold me over until the 'real' ATI Xpress200 motherboards come out.