ECS Z87H3-A4, any thoughts?

[Shyatic]

It's priced right at Newegg, full ATX... I am not much of an overclocker so not sure how that will work out, but for me -- stability is the name of the game. Any thoughts?

Edit: link added: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813135352
Thanks!

 

[crashtech]

It's the cheapest Z87 at Newegg, and it looks like the power phases are 2+1? Not so great. If you are not gonna overclock, you could get a higher quality board with a lesser chipset for the same money. It's hard to put a lot of faith into a board like that, but who knows. It would definitely be fine for underclocking and undervolting, Z87 boards give that ability, but maybe not so much for overclocking.

 

[Shyatic]

It's the cheapest Z87 at Newegg, and it looks like the power phases are 2+1? Not so great. If you are not gonna overclock, you could get a higher quality board with a lesser chipset for the same money. It's hard to put a lot of faith into a board like that, but who knows. It would definitely be fine for underclocking and undervolting, Z87 boards give that ability, but maybe not so much for overclocking.

Gotcha... any thoughts, so long as I can enable hardware virtualization?

 

[crashtech]

I would do some more homework and figure out what your goals are. I'm not sure if this unit matches your needs. I don't think too many people are taking it seriously enough to try it out. Is this for your gaming rig, as I recall from the other thread? If you want to increase your odds of having a decent OCing experience, you should pick a board that is more often used by enthusiasts, like maybe the Asus Z87-A or a dozen others that have known track records. Picking the cheapest of anything is a good way to end up disappointed.

On the other hand, if you aren't OCing, you can get a better board for that money.

 

[Compman55]

Back in the day of the athlon XP and athlon 64, ECS motherboards had some very weird issues. I gave up using them. I beleive they have really turned around with todays current lineup.

When picking a board, make sure the company is prompt with bios updates, so it will support the latest hardware.

 

[coffeejunkee]

Gotcha... any thoughts, so long as I can enable hardware virtualization?

Notice the K model cpu's don't support VT-d. If that's important to you there is no real reason to buy a board with the Z87 chipset. Actually, you'll probably have to search around to find out if a particular mobo supports it (both cpu and mobo have to support VT-d).

 

[crashtech]

Q87 will support VT-d, but most virtualization scenarios don't require it.

 

[escrow4]

Looks horrible, cut back ATX (look at the number of mounting holes), tiny tiny southbridge heatsink, pointless dust guard, only a 4 pin connector, no fat heatsink anywhere (I've seen H87 boards with better heatsinks), and ECS. Eh, avoid. You won't be overclocking much, if at all.