ECS A890GXM-A2 Review
Published by Christian Ney on 13.12.10Presentaion / Layout / I/O / Bundle
Presentation
The ECS A890GXM-A2 comes on a black PCB with grey, white and one black expansion slot. Furthermore the different coolers are kept in the same colors which creates a very homogenous look that is pleasing for ones eye.
Layout
For
once we find a single heatsink that takes care of cooling both mosfets as well
as northbridge.
It's pretty rare that a single block is taking care of mosfet and northbridge
cooling. Normally this is done via two distinct heatsinks.
On the following picture we can see the four DDR3 Slots that come arranged in
pairs. The board supports Dual-Channel and the memory will be plugged into the
DIMM-Slots one directly by another without any space inbetween. This might
affect the memory temperature especially when one plans to overclock them.
Definitely a plus point for the layout is the fact that the first two PCI-e
slots are quite far from eachother. This is very useful for a CrossFire setup
where the two cards can become really hot when they're right next to eachother.
Furthermore there is also one PCI-e x1 which can be use for additional expansion
cards.
Reset and power button are also very well placed. You can access them in almost every situation. What would have been very useful too is a CLR_CMOS button to erase the BIOS.
I/O
The rear panel is very well equipped. It has got a digital as well as an analogue video connector. Furthermore you'll even find an HDMI connector and a display port. So there really is everything you could possibly need. For high-end's sake, we find a button clear_cmos available directly outside the box. The rest is pretty standard, there are 4 USB2, 2 USB3, a Firewire connector, two ethernet ports and an audio panel with an optical out.
ECS equipped the A890GXM-A2 with a total of five SATA3 connectors but unfortunately there are no USB3 ports for a front panel. But never the less there are four internal USB2 connectors.
At this point one can see the three different fan connectors. Normally there are at least four fan headers on a gaming motherboard. Not that you would use all of them the reason is also that the different fans can be connected easily.
Bundle
The A890GXM-A2s delivery includes everything you need to put our configuration in place. Therefore you find a manual (available only in English, even on the manufacturer's website), an installation guide (available in all languages), four SATA3 cables, eSATA bracket cable, cover for the rear panel and four plastic covers for all rear video connectors. Although it lacks a CrossFire bridge you might forgive ECS because of the boards very competitive price.
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