- The ECS PF88 costs around 88 USD, making it one of the cheapest Intel LGA775 motherboards available.
- Extremely cheap
- Can run Intel LGA775, Pentium-M 479, AMD64 754 and AMD64 939
- Gigabit Ethernet and 6 SATA ports for that price
- Quiet, only passive cooling
- BIOS bugs
- Chipset performance not as good as competition
- Few overclocking options in BIOS
- Limited overclocking with SIMA cards
ECS has engineered a unique board with the PF88 Extreme. Being able to run most of today's CPUs is very cool. But personally I do not see the point why someone would want to do that. Most users decide to use either AMD or Intel and will stay with that choice for at least one CPU generation. The Pentium M would be a great candidate for this board though, but performance will be limited by both the SIS chipset and the overclocking options available in the BIOS.
During our overclocking tests there was not much to do to get more performance out of the CPUs we tested on. However, if you are definitely not planning to overclock, you might want to consider this board, because of its great price. You will have a hard time finding a motherboard with comparable features like six SATA ports and Gigabit Ethernet for less than $100.
The SIS chipset is about 5% slower in benchmarks, for a Media PC this doesn't really matter. What makes this board even more attractive for a Media PC is that it uses no active fans, so there is no extra noise which disturbs your movie experience. The on-board audio supports Intel HD Audio, another good feature for a Media PC.