ECS P43T-A2 Review

I was actually a little surprised with this board. It got a lot further than the ECS boards I've owned in the past.





Specs:
North Bridge – Intel P43
South Bridge – Intel ICH10
4x DDR2 Slots with dual-channel support, up to 16GB RAM
1x PATA
6x SATA 3GB/S
6 Channel Audio
1x Gigabit LAN port
4x Rear USB
Form factor is ATX
1x PCI-Express 16x
3x PCI-Express 1x
2x PCI


The only obvious design flaws are the south bridge heatsink (or lack thereof) and the SATA port placement if using a dual-slot video card. Also there is a fan header sandwiched between some caps and the 4-pin CPU power.





The test setup:
ECS P43T-A2
Intel Core 2 e8500
2x1gb Team Xtreem PC2 8000
BFG 8800GTS 512mb
Corsair HX 520w
Thermalright Ultra-120


BIOS Option are about what I expected from a budget board.










The absolute max stable FSB on 5:6 RAM ratio is 362 MHz.




At 1:1 ratio I got much better results. By no means a record setter, but a pretty nice little board for something like a budget CPU with a low FSB wall.




I submitted a much more detailed review for the front page

neat! did this come with a fry's combo? im still wondering if the E7200 with 7000 board is worth the $119, i saw in the ad.

i wouldnt try ocing a quad core much on that board though cause of the 3-phase pwm.

No, but if they have it in a Fry's combo that would be a big step up from the one's they've had previously

i doubt you will see this in a frys combo... thoes boards are usually geforce 7050 crap chipsets (single channel ram), or the better 945 chipset... the upper end cpu combos get the G31 boards.

This board does look intresting thats for sure, but ECS leaves a bad REALLY bad taste in my mouth, although an intel chipset one is much more favorable.

Evilsizer said:

neat! did this come with a fry's combo? im still wondering if the E7200 with 7000 board is worth the $119, i saw in the ad.

i wouldnt try ocing a quad core much on that board though cause of the 3-phase pwm.

Click to expand...

I picked up one of those combos and I was utterly dissapointed in the E7200, could not even hit 3.6, took it back and said this thing sucks, it was a Q802 batch and I relly expected it to be a champ, just goes to show.

To Sno, sorry for the diversion....the ECS board looks pretty good for a budget board, how much do they retail for?

About $75

Looking forward to seeing the full front page review.

I'll try and get a review of the Asrock P43Twins1600 which i got in the post this morn up in the next few days. Then we can compare notes.