ECS Z87H3-A2X Golden Motherboard Review

Conclusion

To be honest, when i first started testing the ECS Z87H3-A2X Golden motherboard I really didn’t know how it was going to perform. It has been a very long time since I have gotten a chance to use anything from ECS and they had fallen off my radar. I was expecting ho-hum performance from ECS. I think that is a trap that we as reviewers can fall into. We have past experience with a product or manufacture and we’re instantly biased because of our experience. Well I am glad that I was proven wrong. ECS has similar performance to the big 3, or specifically in this case Gigabyte.

We expect performance on a given chipset to be similar no matter what motherboard it is placed on. Processor, memory, graphics cards should have an impact on results given that they are all different. The chipset on the motherboard should not. A z87 chipset should perform well on an Asus board as well as on an ECS board. If there are major discrepancies between the two, then it could point to a poor implementation or installation of the chipset. The ECS Z87H3-A2X Golden Motherboard falls right inline with what we would expect performance to be. What makes the difference between the motherboards is the extra features they manufacture includes. In this case, the Gigabyte motherboard can be purchased for about 189.00 where as the Z87H3-A2X GOLDEN can be purchased for around 250.00. The main difference between the two boards feature wise is the ECS Z87H3-A2X Golden Motherboard features dual network cards, wireless and bluetooth, actively cooled heatsink on the VRM and better audio. The capacitors are of a better quality. All of these little things bring value to the board and while you may pay a little more for one vs. the other, if you are going to use them that will be a value to you.

The BOIS on the ECS Z87H3-A2X Golden Motherboard was easy to navigate and I was able to attain a 4.5 GHz total clock on the Intel i5 4770K, which I was also able to obtain on the Gigabyte board. More now, the motherboards are not the limiting factor, but the CPU is.

Typically I don’t use the included software very often. In this case, the Fan control software and Driver update software feel well done and easy to use. The overclocking software I feel can be tuned a little more and feels as if it isn’t finished. It is my opinion that overclocking the CPU is easier done in the BIOS than in Windows.  The BIOS update software never would pull a BIOS or tell me if the current BIOS on the board was the latest.

Overall the ECS Z87H3-A2X Golden felt very refined and smooth. The features on this motherboard are a great addition and can be used in a variety of ways. The included network interfaces could allow someone to run a PFSense firewall with a wireless access point built in. ECS has taken great care with their LEET series and it shows.

The hardware features and performance of the ECS Z87H3-A2X Golden Motherboard earn it an Editor’s Choice award.

 [sc:editors_choice_award ]