# ECS X48T-A Black Series Motherboard Available in Limited Quantity



## malware (May 19, 2008)

Heading to the high-end motherboard offerings more and more, Elitegroup Computer Systems (ECS) has launched its latest killer motherboard. The ECS X48T-A Black Series motherboard is based on Intel's X48 Express chipset, and as such it offers full support for Intel 45nm processors, Intel XMP technology, and ATI's CrossFire technology (two PCI Express 2.0 x16 slots). The big cooling you see on the picture is ECS' Qooltech Generation 2, a fan-less design with single heatpipe and enough copper to cool efficiently hot parts such as the Intel X48 north bridge, the Intel ICH9R south bridge and the CPU PWM area. The X48T-A motherboard is available now in limited quantity, so you better hurry up. More info is available here.





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## Gam'ster (May 19, 2008)

Overall layout looks good, very clean looking but from what ive been reading ECS dont have a good reliability track record, ive no experience with ECS products my self. The p8 connector is placed in similar location to MSI's offerings.

Gam


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## echo75 (May 19, 2008)

with that huge heatsink in the middle of the board , not many heatsinks can fit there.


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## btarunr (May 19, 2008)

I find nothing wrong with the NB heatsink size looking at how big certain other manufacturers' coolers are but a little close to the socket square. Nice neat layout. It all boils down to brand reliablilty.


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## candle_86 (May 19, 2008)

Well ECS doesnt have a problem there, any ECS user can tell you that, ECS boards tend to be very stable and realible, im using one right now, and its nearing 2yrs old


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## thebeephaha (May 19, 2008)

ECS is hit or miss. I see many dead ones at my service shop though. More so than the other mobo makers out there.


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## sno.lcn (May 19, 2008)

It's good to see more enexpected manufacturers getting into the highend market.  It'll be interesting to see what this board can do


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## Cybrnook2002 (May 19, 2008)

I rather like it. I would not rule out ECS as a future board. I have my mom running an ECS on an old AMD thunderbird for the past 5 years , no problems except for having to replace the cmos battery a few times. Its clean and nicely laid out. Very "usable". The only thing I don't like, and its common with alot of manufacturers these days, is the funny IDE placement. I wish they would still line the IDE and Floppy connectors close to the sides, where they are usable, I hate having a long IDE cable stretching across everything. Yes, I still use IDE burners


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## allen337 (May 19, 2008)

Look around the cpu socket It only has 1  Ferrite Core Choke, most companies who want their motherboard to last has 8-12 of them around the socket. Only see 3 solid caps by the socket also another sign its cheap made.  ALLEN

(edit) might be somemore solid caps behind that heatsink.


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## Cybrnook2002 (May 19, 2008)

allen337 said:


> Look around the cpu socket It only has 1  Ferrite Core Choke, most companies who want their motherboard to last has 8-12 of them around the socket. Only see 3 solid caps by the socket also another sign its cheap made.  ALLEN
> 
> (edit) might be somemore solid caps behind that heatsink.



Thats what im thinking, because the last heat sink is covering the PWM for the cpu. We can only speculate as to what ECS is up to.


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## panchoman (May 19, 2008)

something gives me a cheap feeling about this board...


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## Assimilator (May 19, 2008)

Here's a better image. As you can see, 6 chokes and 9 solid caps around the CPU socket, which is a bit low considering ASUS boards have 8/11 respectively. But ECS don't seem to say that this board is designed for overclocking, so I reckon if you leave it at the default specs (or don't push it too hard) it'll be fine.

Not a bad looking mobo, I don't like the black PCI slots but that's just personal preference. And is that a COM port next to the PS/2 ports? WTF?


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## ShadowFold (May 19, 2008)

panchoman said:


> something gives me a cheap feeling about this board...



Cause ECS gives off that image. I hope that changes tho! We need more good mobo manufacturers. The more the better I say.


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## candle_86 (May 19, 2008)

ECS has done great OC'rs before 

K7VTA3 was a great OC'r so was K7VTA6 so i don't rule them out at all. My Nforce3-A Was a good 754 Oc'r got higher than my Chaintech Nforce3 250 or my MSI K8N Neo FSR ever did with my A64 3200, the MSI and Chaintech topped out at 2.5 the ECS topped it out at 2.7


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## iamajunky (May 20, 2008)

*Always with these board makers*

Great looking board except for the SATA ports are right in the line of fire of the video card setup


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## happita (May 20, 2008)

The fact that their NB cooling is called Qooltech is reason enough for me not to get it


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## tkpenalty (May 20, 2008)

Assimilator said:


> Here's a better image. As you can see, 6 chokes and 9 solid caps around the CPU socket, which is a bit low considering ASUS boards have 8/11 respectively. But ECS don't seem to say that this board is designed for overclocking, so I reckon if you leave it at the default specs (or don't push it too hard) it'll be fine.
> 
> Not a bad looking mobo, I don't like the black PCI slots but that's just personal preference. And is that a COM port next to the PS/2 ports? WTF?



Low? 6 Phase and 8 phase- there isnt much difference. I'd be more concerned of the 5~4 phases MSI puts on their high end boards.



happita said:


> The fact that their NB cooling is called Qooltech is reason enough for me not to get it



At least they are trying to be innovative, instead of calling it iCool, etc.


Has it been pointed out, that ECS is one of the mobo mfgrs who provide full res pics of their products? I honestly think other mfgrs should do that too!


This board deserves a review.


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## Rebo&Zooty (May 20, 2008)

thebeephaha said:


> ECS is hit or miss. I see many dead ones at my service shop though. More so than the other mobo makers out there.



true, BUT the hit and miss part is true with ALL brands, main thing when buying ecs, KNOW WHAT YOU ARE AFTER, avoid via chipsets for example.

as to morethen any other maker, i have seen STACKS of gigabyte and asus boards that where flawed as well as foxconn boards and others, and when i say stacks, i have worked at shops where we wold have a 4foot talk stack of bad boards waiting to be shiped back for rma....funny part, there was NEVER a large stack of ECS boards, mostly because i knew what boards to avoid when telling the owners what to order.


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## Wile E (May 20, 2008)

I wouldn't touch this board with a 39 and a half Foot pole.


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## Rebo&Zooty (May 20, 2008)

Wile E said:


> I wouldn't touch this board with a 39 and a half Foot pole.



just because you bought a bad cf board


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## Wile E (May 20, 2008)

Yep. Gave me a taste of what their BIOS coders are capable of, or more like *NOT* capable of.


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## allen337 (May 20, 2008)

Assimilator said:


> Here's a better image. As you can see, 6 chokes and 9 solid caps around the CPU socket, which is a bit low considering ASUS boards have 8/11 respectively. But ECS don't seem to say that this board is designed for overclocking, so I reckon if you leave it at the default specs (or don't push it too hard) it'll be fine.
> 
> Not a bad looking mobo, I don't like the black PCI slots but that's just personal preference. And is that a COM port next to the PS/2 ports? WTF?





only problem I have with this is the x48 is supposed to be a better overclocker than the x38 so why would you build one for stock speeds? I would consider buying something like this IF ECS would consider its past (junk motherboards) and adjust the price. Ill never buy ECS at full price unless a miracle happens. For those of us who buy 6-10 motherboards yearly for personal builds, and 20-30 yearly for friend/customer builds ecs will never get our feet back in their door with full priced motherboards until they prove theirselves. If it was an asus,gigabyte,dfi,msi,intel,or abit x48 that cost $75-$100 more than the ecs I would just eat the $ and go with what I know.  ALLEN


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## cdawall (May 20, 2008)

meh ECS boards are ok i got a celeron D 351 sitting on a P4M800-pro thats been running @ 3.8ghz for about a year no probs so far


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## Rebo&Zooty (May 20, 2008)

allen337 said:


> only problem I have with this is the x48 is supposed to be a better overclocker than the x38 so why would you build one for stock speeds? I would consider buying something like this IF ECS would consider its past (junk motherboards) and adjust the price. Ill never buy ECS at full price unless a miracle happens. For those of us who buy 6-10 motherboards yearly for personal builds, and 20-30 yearly for friend/customer builds ecs will never get our feet back in their door with full priced motherboards until they prove theirselves. If it was an asus,gigabyte,dfi,msi,intel,or abit x48 that cost $75-$100 more than the ecs I would just eat the $ and go with what I know.  ALLEN



of your list, msi and asus have shitty bios and driver support, gigabyte....well its hit and miss, DFI makes boards that man times are picky about ram/psu/case colour, abit....their support is still worse then it was back in their hay day. intel, well their boards arent clockers, intel dosnt want you clocking their stuff, i know they have had a few clockers, but if ur a clocker u dont look at intel branded boards anymore then you look at ecs 


and you should try biostars tseirse/tpower boards


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## Wile E (May 21, 2008)

Rebo&Zooty said:


> of your list, *msi and asus have shitty bios and driver support, gigabyte....well its hit and miss, DFI* makes boards that man times are picky about ram/psu/case colour, abit....their support is still worse then it was back in their hay day. intel, well their boards arent clockers, intel dosnt want you clocking their stuff, i know they have had a few clockers, but if ur a clocker u dont look at intel branded boards anymore then you look at ecs
> 
> 
> and you should try biostars tseirse/tpower boards


All of those companies have infinitely better BIOS and driver support than ECS.


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## Rebo&Zooty (May 22, 2008)

IF their bios dont brick ur board!!!!

read up on msi's flash tool they send out with their boards, it bricks more boards doing updates then you would belive!!!!!

asus never fixes/updates their audio drivers for the ADI chipsets unless you a vista user, and since most of the boards that use that chip where out b4 vista you would think they would update them specly since all it takes is them slaping a packege from analog devices up for us.

gigabytes gotten better but for a while they where giving out bios that no matter how you flashed them it had a large chance to brick the board......(i know i had to send in 20+ boards over that time period because it was cheaper then having them send a new bios chip)

dfi has issues due to default bios settings in most cases, but still, at least with ECS they work at stock most times just fine, in the case of dfi i have had them tell me "get a new psu, and new ram" dispite having high quility units of both, they wanted me to buy 200$ ram kits and 300$ psu's.............


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## EarlZ (Feb 8, 2009)

Are both 16x slots @ 16x electronically? or 16x + 8x ?


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