ECS Z77H2-A2X Golden Board

The high-end motherboard segment has always been the place where style and function come together to woo potential buyers. With functionality an already tough subject to decide on, there comes the looks of the board to add to the dilemma in choosing. Now in the case of looks, its always a personal choice. Where some opt for guns, military schemes and armors others prefer to go from abstract to simple and the variations are limitless. To make a statement you have to stand-out, and today’s review subject is trying to do just that. Clad in gold in nearly every metallic surface as well as the promise of rigorous QA testing, the Z77H2-A2X and the higher-end Z77H2-AX Golden Boards from ECS are the company’s most daring attempt to step into the enthusiast scene yet. We have the Z77H2-A2X today for review and we’re making this one extremely showy!

ECS (Elitegroup Computer Systems) has always thrived in the OEM and budget segment of the component market and they’ve been very good at it. Twenty-five years in the business should be enough testament to that. One thing that ECS as a company has yet to do is establish themselves as an enthusiast’s choice and their supposed attempt in this segment is their Black series of motherboards which has more or less floundered in the mid-range market for a couple of years now. More recently though, ECS has come full-circle and has intensified the marketing of their Black series, billing their most recent offerings in this series as Black Extreme which includes the X79R-AX which we’ve looked at before. Stepping up their game, the new Golden Board series from ECS -the Z77H2-AX & Z77H2-A2X- both from the Black Extreme line which support the new Intel 22nm Ivy Bridge processor is what ECS is banking on as their trump card to lift themselves from budget-brand status (not a bad thing in itself). We’ll check the Z77H2-A2X along with Intel’s new Ivy Bridge Core i7-3770K unlocked processor and see if this Golden Board is more than just gaming bling. First, up some detailed specs and photos:

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[tabs tab1="PACKAGING" tab2="CLOSER LOOK" tab3="BIOS"]

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TEST SETUP & OVERCLOCKING

We would like to thank ECS, and Kingston Technologies Inc. for providing the parts and equipment for this review.

This is the first Z77 motherboard review material we have so comparative scores with other products are scant as of this writing. We will however update all the graphs once we get more Z77 motherboards to show you, the readers, a much more comprehensive performance gauge of the ECS Z77H2-A2X Golden Board.

Overclocking the ECS Z77H2-A2X is no simple affair. As previously experienced with ECS UEFI BIOS, we have a hard time trying to configure the system to overclock to our taste. With the lack of presets, most noobies will most likely dabble in the Quick OC feature. Though functional, the Quick OC feature is too aggressive shoving our i7-3770K to 48x which was too unstable at the automatic voltage set by the BIOS. ECS’ UEFI also lacks fine voltage control, leaving the user with only offset values that get put on top of automatic voltages set by the motherboard. The core voltage though has an option for allowing manual voltage settings. Still, the option for setting custom voltages for undervolting would be a very nice feature.

It takes a while for one to get used to the M.I.B. X tuning options but considering the limited options you have, there’s not much of a learning curve here provided you know the settings to be changed. We managed to overclock our sample to a stable 4.6Ghz and this is what we’ll stick with as tuning the sample any higher puts our already hot Ivy Bridge chip ever so closer to its temperature limit under load.

PERFORMANCE

[tabs tab1="SANDRA" tab2="wPrime" tab3="Cinebench" tab4="SuperPI" tab5="3DMark 06" tab6="Video Conversion"]

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GAME TESTS

[tabs tab1="Unigine Heaven 3.0" tab2="3DMark Vantage" tab3="3DMark 11" tab4="Battlefield 3"]

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CONCLUSION

Considerations for choosing a motherboard usually resides in 3 key factors: performance, functionality and looks. Performance across motherboards based on the same chipset will almost always be within a short magin between each competing product. Even more so when they’re based on the same chipset. This is where overclocking options, board quality and stability come in as they give the most value for the end-user in this respect. Then there’s functionality and features which round out the motherboards offerings. A board that overclocks great but has limited connectivity and expansion slots isn’t going to be top consideration for the majority of consumers. Then finally there’s looks, which no matter how vain and subjective always usually dictates what users end up buying. Its hard to sell a stable, overclocking board with 8 PCI-e slots and 8 USB3.0 ports if its got a crappy looking PCB and heatsink styling.

With all those mentioned, the point is there is always a junction at which these factors meet. So does ECS’ Golden Board get close to it? Well we can like it all we want but there will be people out there that won’t dig the golden theme. Its just the way things go in the world. The good news for those who do prefer it is the board performs very nicely and we’ll hopefully get the chance to compare it to other Z77 boards in the high-end range soon (*wink wink* MSI, ASUS, Gigabyte, ASRock *wink wink*). The built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity is also a nice touch as well as the inclusion of 6 USB3.0 ports amongst others.

Everything’s not all sunny with the Z77H2-A2X Golden Board though. Once again we’ve had to deal with ECS’ poor UEFI BIOS interface and its laundry list of annoyances. First off is the mouse compatibility. We seriously can never use any mouse properly with this BIOS so this feature is remotely usable. Secondly is the EZ mode which is nothing close to easy with its hard to read icons and inability to be switched off. Moving on to the most important matter is the overclocking options. This motherboard can go so much further with a finely-tuned BIOS with some serious overclocking options. The lack of voltage fine tuning as well as custom Turbo Mode ratios amongst other missing options really put this board down in the OC department and that is truly sad considering the potential this board has. Another issue we’ve encountered is this board just won’t get up from S3 Standby. In short, every problem we have is a BIOS issue. On a more hardware related note, we would’ve preferred 2 front USB2.0 headers as some people have expansion tray device that use these beside those included in the case.

Negative thoughts aside, everything seems to be going right for ECS with this board. If this is their attempt at shaking off their budget-brand image, they’re certainly on the right track. Priced at around $210 dollars, the ECS Z77H2-A2X Golden Board goes up against a lot of competing enthusiast boards, most of which though are barely the top brass of their companies product port-folios and lack the built-in functionality that the Z77H2-A2X has as well as the bling bling swagger. In closing, the Z77H2-A2X from ECS is a good motherboard for gamers, power users and professionals who require a decent motherboard with some extra features and has OC potential, too. ECS states that these boards go through their Non-Stop program, which is an extensive screening and testing phase that the products undergo before heading out of the factory which tells us that ECS is confident on these boards’ quality, too. We do hope that ECS puts more attention and thought into their UEFI BIOS and overclocking options. This might just put them on the good list of enthusiasts but for now, all we can do is wait.