Originally posted by: hans007
Originally posted by: GEOrifle
Forget about ESC MOBO , it's DEAD FISH.
i dont get the huge anti ECS opinion here.
sure they made some horrible boarsd like 6-7 years ago.
but they are no worse than say foxconn or something or biostar now.
I built some computers with ECS motherboards 7-8 years ago that are still going strong. Personally, I think it's time to upgrade, but the people who bought them from me don't want to spend any money if it isn't necessary.
As long as the chipsets were good, the motherboards were pretty good. But the motherboards that incorporated flaky chipsets back then (from VIA, for example) tended to be flaky, which was only natural. VIA chipsets got better over the years, so motherboards that incorporated them got better.
In the case at hand, I like the Intel G31 chipset because it performs almost as well as any other chipset on the market (excluding graphics performance), and it runs cool (it only uses 9 Watts). So I happen to like the ECS G31T-M. I wouldn't put a 125W processor on it, but it's perfect for low-end processors that won't be overclocked. Since it doesn't get hot, it should last for years.
ECS is an ODM (Original Design Manufacturer), which means they design and build products for other companies which sell them under their own names. ECS products really aren't much worse than the products they design and manufacture for other companies, such as Abit, EVGA, BFG Tech, XFX, etc. I think Biostar is also on that list since they always seem to get the same licenses that ECS gets (for chipsets, reference designs, etc.). If ECS makes crap, then I guess those other companies sell crap.
Asus, Foxconn, Gigabyte, and MSI also make products for other companies, including reference boards for companies like NVidia and ATi/AMD. It's a common practice in the computer industry. It puts the production capacity of the big companies to good use and eliminates capital expenses for a lot of smaller companies. But ECS is bigger than all the rest.
I suspect that ECS focuses on the "budget" segment and does not put many overclocking options into their own brand of motherboards because they don't want to compete with their clients, who usually target the "high performance" market. Maybe that makes them "crap". But ECS motherboards are solid and dependable. I actually bought a defective one the other day from Fry's, but I suspect that it was actually a customer return (judging by certain tell-tale signs inside the box), so it's possible that a previous buyer did something stupid to it and ruined it, which is usually the case when something is actually wrong with a motherboard.
Most products that customers return are not defective at all; the problem is that most people don't know what they're doing. That sort of criticism is not as bad as you might think; because when you think about, WHY should any normal person know how to build computers? That sort of knowledge is not essential to lead a normal, happy life. It just means that some people shouldn't try to build their own computers.