Motherboard Review: ECS Z87H3-A3x

[Lotus]

Yes, I'm currently using an ECS board in my build. Why? Because I literally got it for free. I used to work at a computer store, and during a raffle at an event that the staff attended I won this board. It has been sitting unused for around a year in my closet and I decided that I should at least take advantage of it at some point. Why bother with this review? Because ECS is apparently still making products, so here we go.

 

Notes: this motherboard went for around $100 on release, but I paid a whopping $0 for mine. In the conclusion and recommendations, I'm going to treat it like a Z97 chipset motherboard for comparisons and "would I buy it" considerations. Note: the only way to reflash the bios to support haswell-refresh chips is with an original haswell CPU, and there is no dual bios or removable bios chip.

 

Looks:

Be real, most people immediately jump to looks first. If you've seen this board before, you may have seen it with these weird golden foils that make no sense. Well, I don't know why they were in any photos because this board just doesn't have them. It actually looks fairly decent from the typical viewing angle because you can't realize the VRM heat sink has that ridiculous "1337" design, and the chipset heatsink looks decent too. Black PCB with interesting color accents is a decent choice. The VGA output kinda ruins it though. I give it overall a "meh." However, if you're willing to do some touch-up paint on the VGA adapter and find yourself a nice Sapphire Tri-X board (the one with yellow accents) and some matched ram, it could look pretty awesome. Me? I don't have a window in my case so I don't care, hence the memory.

 

Installation/Use:

Well, props to you if you immediately noticed that it looks like I installed my memory in the wrong configuration. Except it isn't in the wrong configuration and the motherboard did NOT color code their memory slots NOR have any kind of good labeling on the motherboard. They're just DDR3_1, DDR3_2, DDR3_3, and DDR3_4. The ONLY way you know that this motherboard uses a weird configuration is if you read the manual. DDR3_1 and DDR3_2 are paired, not DDR3_1 and DDR3_3 . You'll find this kind of ridiculousness common with this board. It is the least user friendly experience I have ever had.

 

When I started overclocking on this board, I kept looking for CPU VCore. However it didn't exist under that name. Instead, if I was in adaptive mode the variable is referred to as "CPU Adaptive Voltage Target" and if in Override it's referred to as "CPU Override Voltage Target." Now, this is my first time overclocking with K Series motherboards (Previously system was an X58), so this terminology confused the hell out of me. It's the same deal with RING voltage (Ring Override Voltage Target). Once you figure this out overclocking is super easy as is expected of overclocking on K-SKU Haswell chips. My CPU easily hit 4.5 GHz @ 1.29v, which is apparently average for the 4770k. Given it's 6-phase VRM design and how stably voltage is supplied to the CPU and it doesn't even fluctuate when going from idle to full load, I'd venture a guess that this board is actually a great overclocker. I just got an average chip. There are no on-motherboard buttons, but removing the CMOS battery works like a charm to reset bios settings as it should so I really don't care that this feature is missing. Overall, once you get past the whole silly nomenclature, my overclocking experience was all positive.

 

Lastly, fan configuration. I prefer to do everything in bios, and changing the CPU fan curve in-bios was actually fairly easy and strait forward. This time the nomenclature actually made sense, although it could have been clearer. The problem? Two of their three system fan headers are PWM while I have voltage controlled system fans, and I have so far been unable to get the motherboard to realize this. There's no setting and it doesn't auto-sense so while there's a shitload of fan headers (2 CPU fan headers, 3 system fan headers, and a 3-pin fan header that's always on for a total of 6 fan headers) with 4 PWM fan headers (2 CPU, 2 System), I can't configure them in a way that doesn't make my non-PWM fans spin all-out. It's quite stupid. Also, this motherboard supports ECS' suite of tuning software, but I can't find my installation disc and you cannot find this download in their support section. You can download drivers and bios updates, but not these utilities. A bad point for ECS support before I even try contacting them. For the purpose of this review I'm assuming that this is a fixable issue with a solution that I can't find due to weird nomenclature or weird bios navigation, and not a fault with the board. Every other problem I ran into turned out that way and was quickly resolved once I figured it out.

 

I want to make a note about the audio: it's excellent with no interference.... unless your stupid case forces you to run the 8-pin CPU connector literally right over the audio caps, PCB traces, and other hardware. When I was trying everything out as a test before doing a full build I had my PSU hooked up to it Frankenstein style and noticed zero electronic interference noise. After installation, I started noticing electronic interference when the SNR was really low. I have since bought an 8-ping CPU extension cable to fix this issue by routing my cable a different way that was originally too long a run to reach.

 

Performance:

What can I say? If it weren't for the fan issue, this thing would be ridiculously high on performance (features in this case because it's a motherboard) per dollar. 6 phase VRM design, good audio; SLI and Crossfire support with an included SLI bridge; 6 fan headers, 4 of which have PWM support (waiting until I hear back from ECS before I make the final call on Voltage control fan issues) with independently adjustable fan profiles (CPU1 has its own profile, CPU2 has its own, and all system fans share one), and all the ancillaries that we expect like plenty of SataIII ports (6x) and so on. Hell, it even has a PS/2 port on its rear I/O. The only thing missing from this board that newer and more expensive boards have is an m.2 slot (and arguably Wi-Fi), but other than that this gets you every single feature I could possibly want. There is no dual bios and the bios chip is NOT removable, so you really don't want to reflash the bios unless you have to as there is no way to recover from a corrupt bios, but that's really the only downside.

 

Conclusion:

Would I buy this board if I were choosing for myself? If this board were the same price as another board from manufacturers like Asus, ASrock, and Gigabyte, I would take the other board since it won't have a confusing BIOS to navigate among other oddities. That's really the big problem with this board: while everything works great once you figure it out, you really have to read the manual thoroughly to figure out all the stupid little nuances like the RAM configuration. It's just ridiculous how weird this board is. It basically has its own learning curve. Once you get past that, it's ridiculously good price to performance with a shitload of features. What would it take for me to buy this board? 10% cheaper in price than other boards with the same features (6-phase VRM design, SLI, etc). However that's just me. I would NOT recommend this board to someone who isn't confident that they can figure out all the crazy wacky weirdo stuff going on with it as it is by far the LEAST user friendly experience I have ever had with a motherboard.

[Swndlr]

l33t review 10/10 - IGN

[79 Potatoes]

WTF does "Gank" mean? It sounds like something... rotten

[Lotus]

WTF does "Gank" mean? It sounds like something... rotten

It's a gaming term commonly used in MOBAs. It has a specific meaning but for these purposes they might as well have just put Pwn instead. It's just stupid marketing of someone clearly not involved trying to use gaming lingo to make a cool name.

 

Basically, the entire board is like they're out of touch with humanity.

[NumLock21]

It's a gaming term commonly used in MOBAs. It has a specific meaning but for these purposes they might as well have just put Pwn instead. It's just stupid marketing of someone clearly not involved trying to use gaming lingo to make a cool name.

 

Basically, the entire board is like they're out of touch with humanity.

"404 Server Error" would be a better name

[Lotus]

"404 Server Error" would be a better name

Except the board actually works and works well. It's just so weird.

[NumLock21]

Except the board actually works and works well. It's just so weird.

I guess they want to be in the same level as Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, but it will take them quite some time to rebuilt their reputation, showing they're just as good as others. In the past ECS was for extremely cheap builds, It's board quality was meh, but surprisingly some of them are okay.

[Lotus]

I guess they want to be in the same level as Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, but it will take them quite some time to rebuilt their reputation, showing they're just as good as others. In the past ECS was for extremely cheap builds, It's board quality was meh, but surprisingly some of them are okay.

In terms of performance, overclocking, stability, power delivery, and features I would easily put this specific board on par with the main board manufacturers.

 

The problem is that god awful bios is weird to navigate, their support site doesn't include utilities just drivers and bios updates, and even the memory placement is weird. Specs and performance though are great. IMO this board has a better featureset than the Gigabyte GA-Z97X-SLI due to better VRM design, fan headers, more SATAIII ports, and so on. Gigabyte just knows how to do a proper bios and not have weird ram configurations, and also understands the little subtle ques like different color dimms per channel to make building easier.

[spwath]

Lol

Gank drone...