Thoughts/opinions on this PCIe 2.0 x16 mobo?

[Krusty]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813135093

ECS P45T-A (Socket 775)

Aside from the comments about IDE placement, anybody heard anything good or bad about this one? Seems new-ish to the market.

[mipoikel]

Sorry but I have to ask... Why do you need IDE channel anyway? 

[Fulmar]

Sorry but I have to ask... Why do you need IDE channel anyway? 

I still use an IDE DVD-RW and DVD-ROM.

Anyways...
I've had too many bad memories with the ECS brand (on my wife's and friend's computer).  Never will I own one of them again.  That Newegg has 5 eggs, but only 4 reviews.

If you want the P45 chipset, I'd maybe check out a Gigabyte board or possibly an Asus P5Q, but they'll run you $30-$50 more.  Get what you pay for most of the time.

[Krusty]

DVD-ROM, CD-RW+/-, ZIP100 drive, all currently use IDE, and it is quite handy to be able to slap in my old PC's 20GB or 10GB IDE drives to do scans or reformat them, all I have to do is pop it out of one PC into the next.

Too expensive to replace all these with SATA 3.0, especially considering the DVD drive is new as of around June or so.

The only SATA drive I have right now is my hard drive.

[Krusty]

edited

[BaldEagl]

Off brand.  Looks ok but I'd wait for more reviews on it.

Check this one out in comparison:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138122

I know you'll never run SLI or crossfire and this one has only 1 PCIE x16 2.0 slot.  The Intel P43 must be the new value edition of the P45 chipset.  That means there will be more manufacturers offering them shortly.

[Getback]

Not a real fan of ecs. However, I built my mom a computer with an ecs that lasted 8 years. When we went upgrade the ram we had issues. So I built her another one.

[BaldEagl]

I was just at newegg and I see there are now a number of boards supporting single PCIe x16 2.0 slots using the Intel X43, X45, G43, G45 and Nvidia 750i chipsets.  It looks like all the manufacturers are moving ahead with wide adoption of the 2.0 slot as standard.

[Krusty]

Finally! Maybe I'll hold off window shopping for a few months til some of those show up on the market.

[BaldEagl]

Finally! Maybe I'll hold off window shopping for a few months til some of those show up on the market.

They are already there.  Go to newegg.  Do a power search under motherboards checking the 1 PCIe x16 2.0 slots option.  There's about a dozen boards or so.

[Fulmar]

If you play the waiting game, then by the time you're ready Krusty, a new technology is going to be around the corner that will urge you to wait longer.  Unless that new technology is really ground breaking, I generally buy when I need the product instead of holding and holding and holding off.  But if you're need isn't now, then I guess wait?

[Chalenge]

Power side on these MBs is unstable enough to cost you components. Go Asus P5Q!

[AirFlyer]

Not that I use IDE anymore but I could see why someone would hate the position it's at. I'm not sure what urged them to put it at the bottom instead of at the right side where it should be.

[Chalenge]

With rounded cable it doesnt really matter. You can use a cable stanchion or route it behind the board.

[BoilerDown]

I'm tempted to do another MB/CPU upgrade myself, and then take the replaced parts to do a real upgrade to my secondary computer which is still a P4 2.4 .  But I just get this feeling that I should wait until closer to the holidays or the new year, because for Aces High what I've got right now runs the game perfectly, and I'm really not doing anything with my computer atm other than Aces High.  Currently an E4300 on Asus Commando motherboard. 

I guess one might ask then... why do I want to upgrade if my computer is fine?  And the answer is that I'm just used to upgrading every 9 - 15 months... and by that schedule I'm due.

So I think what it comes down to is... if your computer does what you need it to do just fine, save your money for a while longer.  If you're not running at 60 frames, for example, in AH2, go ahead and pull the trigger and upgrade.

As for the particular motherboard... I don't know much about it or its brand.  I personally like to get good brands rather than cheap prices, but for work I go for cheap prices and in 8 years I've been at this job I've only regretted that decision for one model of motherboard (Albratron 845s that had bad caps and 95% of them died within 3 years... only 1 or 2 still running).  All the other cheap boards run fine years later.