ECS Z170-LIGHTSABER (Intel LGA1151)

[cadaveca]

ECS has been known to have some rather crazy board names in the past, but none are as crazy as the ECS Z170-LIGHTSABER! With a name like that, you can only naturally expect one thing: a bunch of lights, right? Or will it lean toward the dark side?

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[bug]

TPU: "They are a small company and don't have the capability for BIOS development like some of the bigger brands."
Wikipedia: "It is the fifth largest PC motherboard manufacturer in the world"

And Wikipedia counts Asus and AsRock separately. <- Scratch that, apparently they have severed all ties to Asus.

 

[cadaveca]

TPU: "They are a small company and don't have the capability for BIOS development like some of the bigger brands."
Wikipedia: "It is the fifth largest PC motherboard manufacturer in the world"

And Wikipedia counts Asus and AsRock separately. <- Scratch that, apparently they have severed all ties to Asus.

The truth hurts sometimes.

There are Asus, ASRock, Biostar, ECS, EVGA, Foxconn, Gigabyte, Intel, MSI, Tyan, SuperMicro. Maybe a couple of other brands.

Locally, there are only 5 brands with products for sale in the retail space. ECS is not one of them. They are not large enough. You'll find many ECS boards in OEM boxes, however, which is where I think the majority of their sales are.

 

[Dammeron]

Is it weird, that I like the VRM cooling design? Simple, but very effiecient with no bling-bling, that would worsen it's performance.

However - no more ECS boards for me. The one I owned had a faulty PCIe slot which resulted in lots of graphic artifacts...

 

[cadaveca]

Is it weird, that I like the VRM cooling design? Simple, but very effiecient with no bling-bling, that would worsen it's performance.

However - no more ECS boards for me. The one I owned had a faulty PCIe slot which resulted in lots of graphic artifacts...

Any brand has bad boards every once in a while. We have a user in the past week with a bad ASUS board with dead DIMM slots. It wasn't a cheap board, either.

In my opinion ECS makes good products. The just do not cater to enthusiasts as much as other brands do, and that's not a bad thing.

 

[Dammeron]

All my boards had problems (except Epox 8RDA+ - brilliant in every way ), there were few ASUS, GB, Abit, DFI products, but none was so messed up as the ECS.

 

[Vayra86]

Im still looking for that lightsaber though...

I like the all black, more of that pls!

 

[bug]

Im still looking for that lightsaber though...

I like the all black, more of that pls!

Do you honestly want a lightsaber that close to your motherboard? Tsk, tsk, tsk...

 

[GreiverBlade]

meh, mobo ... i had high expectation indeed probably because i liked ECS almost as high as i loved LanParty back in the days ... those were almost fulfilled by the VRM cooling (monster...) the black overall look

but it look like a el-cheapo mobo and it will probably cost more than my GA-Z170X-Gaming 5 EU (might be wrong ... i hope so ... )

and the cons are mostly dealbreaker, @cadaveca as a cons ... you can add no EMI Shielding for the audio chip and non reinforced PCIeX X16 slot (joking ... but most mid end to high end mobo from various manufacturer include such things now )

• No SLI support (main issue, although slight since SLI is less and less desirable )
• No USB 3.1 Type-C (not really an issue but my mobo has it so why that one wouldn't have one too )
• No built-in Wi-Fi (not an issue, wired is always better for most build)
• M.2 port underperforming (slight issue, plus the size limitations )
• BIOS needs work (agree)

while the review is spot on... i wonder why 8.0 when no price given and more cons than pros

 

[cadaveca]

while the review is spot on... i wonder why 8.0 when no price given and more cons than pros

Price was not available at time of writing (about a month ago) and ECS is always pretty good at giving stuff a reasonable price; Feature-based cons are something that can't affect score in a big way, because that's why you'd look at a board in the first place, for the features. At stock clocks, the board is fine, and is in the middle of most benchmarks, which means there are other boards I have tested that in stock configuration score worse than this one does, so it ain't all bad!

 

[bug]

...

• M.2 port underperforming (slight issue, plus the size limitations )

...

Plus, there's only one.

 

[GreiverBlade]

Plus, there's only one.

well ... i have 2 on my mobo ... but i use none for the moment, i find M.2 limitation quite annoying ... since even one will hinder heavily your PCIeX lane capacity, i think i will rather use them with SATA M.2 than pure PCIeX M.2.

 

[R-T-B]

Do you honestly want a lightsaber that close to your motherboard? Tsk, tsk, tsk...

If it gets me a lightsaber?

...Yes.

 

[bug]

well ... i have 2 on my mobo ... but i use none for the moment, i find M.2 limitation quite annoying ... since even one will hinder heavily your PCIeX lane capacity, i think i will rather use them with SATA M.2 than pure PCIeX M.2.

Actually, that's not a M.2 limitation. What good is fast SSD if it doesn't run at full speed after all? The limitation is in the current chipsets that don't offer enough PCIe lanes.
But yes, you do lose two SATA ports for every M.2 slot you use and that's annoying.

 

[GreiverBlade]

Actually, that's not a M.2 limitation. What good is fast SSD if it doesn't run at full speed after all? The limitation is in the current chipsets that don't offer enough PCIe lanes.

i was not talking about that limitation ... i was talking in allowing PCIeX lane that can be allowed to other things, among the like of SLI or indeed not having enough chipset lane and having to split CPU's one, almost as if Intel would like to force consumer to go X99 and above 6820K as a minima (although the 6820K 28 lane are still better than 6700's 16 lanes ) if they want SLI + M.2 express. (which is not an obligation ofc ... so not really "forcing" )

my mobo offer 2 M.2 32Gb/s and 3 SATA Express (which are splitted in 6 Sata 3 ) i use 4 SATA3 drives (SSD 120gb SSHD 1tb/8gb HDD X2 1TB) technically as i don't need SLI (having a single 1070) i could make use of the 2 M.2 in Express mode and sacrifice the 2 remaining SATA 3 port.

in the end the only thing i find odd on that ECS mobo, depending the pricing ofc, would be non-reinforced PCIeX X16 slot (only the gaming 3 if i look at Gigabyte offer, doesn't have that and that's the low end of the gaming series at a ridiculously low price, to me) and EMI shielding on sound chipset (the later being more aesthetic than anything else, since that board get good result on that part )

 

[CoolZone]

Claymore was a terrible board in terms of overclocking: it was impossible to set the voltage manually and it was also raising voltage automatically if you did set a higher multiplier, making the CPU super hot even at mild overclocks.
Does the Lightning have the same issue?

 

[GhostRyder]

Not a bad motherboard, good VRM, decent looks, great name...But they ruin it with that bios...Little things like missing features in the bios do hold it back considering how this board is portrayed (Meaning high end) and the problem with the M.2.

 

[CoolZone]

The good VRM equals ZERO if the same BUGS are present inside the BIOS and overheat the CPU at mild overclocks.

 

[GreiverBlade]

considering how this board is portrayed (Meaning high end).

for me it's portrayed as a med-low end for the point i mentioned, and unless it's priced under 189chf (where i live) it would enter in a category of price where any mobo in that range have some additional feature (among those i mentioned) bundle and not even the monster VRM cooling would balance that.

if the rumored 159.90$ price is held, it would get it above the Gaming 3 (as example) and closer to the Gaming 5 (my actual mobo that has the aforementioned improvement but not the same VRM cooling and 1 phase less) from Gigabyte which also have the same features + SLI compatibility (minus the VRM cooling ) and a more than ( )slightly better BIOS.

edit: even the cheaper Gaming 3 EU has the reinforced PCIeX X16 and sound EMI shield (again the later being more and Aesthetic concerne ) it would need to be priced under 120$ to enter the range of the Gaming K3 (which only had the 1st PCIeX X16 reinforced) altho the VRM is still stronger with the ECS one, but Reinforced slots are becoming a standard and quite an improvement since some GPU card and custom waterblock (like my previous Kryografics Hawaii who was around 1kg )are getting heavier (preventing sag and avoiding slot ripping is not a bad idea, if i might say )

 

[CoolZone]

The BIOS differences between Gigabyte and ECS boards are like day and night; GB boards also have a very good memory compatibility support and with the ECS Claymore if you cut the power off from the board completely, leave it for 5 mins and plug it back, turn on the system, the initial boot will be a failure because of the bad BIOS; and yeah, this is only of the one issues I have found with that one, there are more...

 

[cadaveca]

Claymore was a terrible board in terms of overclocking: it was impossible to set the voltage manually and it was also raising voltage automatically if you did set a higher multiplier, making the CPU super hot even at mild overclocks.
Does the Lightning have the same issue?

I didn't have the same issues you did with Claymore. What is this lightening you refer to?

The BIOS differences between Gigabyte and ECS boards are like day and night; GB boards also have a very good memory compatibility support and with the ECS Claymore if you cut the power off from the board completely, leave it for 5 mins and plug it back, turn on the system, the initial boot will be a failure because of the bad BIOS; and yeah, this is only of the one issues I have found with that one, there are more...

Sounds like you're a bit butt-hurt about the Claymore. Not sure how that relates to this board, but thanks for the feedback. I will say, expecting the same sort of experience from ECS as compared to another brand just isn't that smart in my books. That's like expecting two girls to be exactly the same... ain't gonna happen often!

 

[CoolZone]

Sorry, I meant Lightsaber.
Yes, I am the same person which came back after the Claymore review, mentioning that it has a hardware fault, meaning that the voltage increased via the multiplier and there was no option to control it manually via BIOS. We have had a discussion then too on the same problem, while the ECS Claymore hardware fault was confirmed by ECS too (their internal hardware team). ECS tried with multiple BIOS versions to fix the issue but could not and did not come with a later hardware version to fix that.

P.S. I have had the Claymore board for review too....same hardware and BIOSes you have also used.

 

[cadaveca]

I don't exactly expect the same support of BIOS refinement from ECS that I do from some of the other larger brands, so even if there are BIOS problems, that's not that big of a deal. Does the board work at stock? Then its fine. OC is always YMMV. IF there are BIOS problems I notice, I report them.

For the Claymore, raised voltage per multiplier is how these CPUs are supposed to work. Perhaps overriding that didn't work perfectly. Meh. In my eyes, you don't buy ECS for OC anyway.

Really though, there are only so many people in the world that can tune BIOS "properly". This is not a skill that comes easily. Even if ECS wanted better, I do not believe there is anyone they could even hire that could make their BIOSes better. So I don't hold it against them.

If you can make a better BIOS for them, they'd probably hire you.

 

[CoolZone]

I do not have anything against ECS, they do make solid hardware, a bit less on the software side though. I was curious if the Lightsaber reincarnation had the exact same BIOS issues.
I was successfully able to change the CPU Core voltage inside UEFI on the BIOSTAR Z170X GAMING, but also the Gigabyte Z170X SoC Force. On the BIOSTAR Z170GT7 and SuperMicro C7Z170OCE the CPU voltage can be modified only if you pass over a certain manual value and seems to have a set offset in programming after you pass 42x or 43x multiplier on the 6600K (CPU on which I have conducted the testing).
Certainly, this (Skylake) is one of the worst Intel generations around in terms of overall BIOS stability and Core Voltage manual setup. I haven't had such problems coming from P4 to Devil's Canyon. Hopefully we will have better experiences with Z270 and Kaby .