Say goodbye to those Fry's ECS mobo/cpu combos...

NoxTek

NoxTek

The Geek Redneck
Joined
May 27, 2002
Messages
9,300
This ought to make some of you happy, heh. According to a goon at Fry's yesterday they will not be using ECS boards in any of their infamous cheapie CPU/Mobo combo deals. Again, according to him Fry's will mostly be using Biostar for their value end combos.

A good thing for all the ECS haters, although I imagine the prices will be a bit higher now. It will be interesting to see how things turn out.

And of course this Fry's employee (Arlington, TX location) could just completely have been blowing smoke up my ass. I spent 10 minutes trying to convince the guy that the E5200 is indeed based on 45nm process and is a Core 2 chip despite the fact that Intel branded it 'Pentium' - meanwhile he's saying 'Sir, it's a Pentium, this is from like 2004, you don't want it, let me sell you an E8500 instead'. :rolleyes:
 
Not that it really matters to me, since we don't have any fry's here, but I'd take an ECS mobo over a biostar anyday. I've built several systems with ECS boards and they've never given me a single problem.
 
I've never had issues with Biostar or ECS mobo's. I base a lot of my value-builds around those 2 brands. In fact, I have a Biostar mobo holding it down in one of my servers, and an ECS in my other server. The ECS board is about 7 years old, and has no issues. The Biostar is a bit newer, however, my old server had a 4yr old Biostar mobo in it.

Again, not seeing why these 2 brands are so "evil". Granted, they are not a board to use if you are wanting to overclock...oh wait, the server with the Biostar mobo is overclocked, and the ECS Setup ran overclocked for 5+ years...Shit, why are they so bad? Good bang for the buck IMO. Not a lot of top shelf features, but, all around a good bang for the buck.
 
Never had issues with any ECS boards I've had over the past 2 years, but then again, I care about stability and not overclocking to the Nth degree to eek out 1.35 fps more than not overclocking...

Biostar... didn't even realize they were still around, to be honest, and I was just at Fry's yesterday doing some extensive browsing for... go figure... a new motherboard for my next "Godbox" I plan to put together in the next few months. I don't recall seeing even one Biostar board on display nor any Biostar boxes so, unless they just pulled every piece of ECS hardware overnight and replaced 'em with Biostar stuff, the Fry's here in Vegas is severely lacking. :D

I did notice on Friday that this week's big sale doesn't have one damned combo deal I thought was even worth the hassles. I was hoping to find a quad-based combo that was worth the money to start with, but... alas... no such thing this week worth a damn.

But, I will say this: I went browsing by hand through the stock of all the Intel mobos - actual Intel retail boards (that's what I prefer for stability) - and almost every one of them was either a refurb or a returned product with the infamous "orange sticker" on the boxes. The only brand new unopened and factory sealed mobos were the Intel "Skulltrail" boards, those monster server ones with dual Xeon sockets just sitting there waiting to be bought up... but for $600 bucks a piece... hell with that. :D
 
A Fry's executive at headquarters set up a shell company that he passed all the ECS wholesale purchases through. He marked the ECS merchandise up at his shell company and then authorized Fry's to purchase it at the marked up price. He then pocketed the profit and went off to casinos to blow it all. He went through millions.

He was busted last month. ECS out this month. Coincidence?

http://www.siliconvalley.com/ci_11408930?IADID=Search-www.siliconvalley.com-www.siliconvalley.com
 
Fluke said:
A Fry's executive at headquarters set up a shell company that he passed all the ECS wholesale purchases through. He marked the ECS merchandise up at his shell company and then authorized Fry's to purchase it at the marked up price. He then pocketed the profit an went off to casinos to blow it all. He went through millions.

He was busted last month. ECS out this month. Coincidence?
Click to expand...

iirc according to reports, he blew it all or almost all of it right here in Vegas, where I live. I laughed when I heard the story as it first broke out, considering we have a Fry's here just down past the Mandalay Bay... funny stuff.
 
I've seen a lot more Biostar motherboards on the shelf, but there are still ECS combos this weekend.
 
Fluke said:
A Fry's executive at headquarters set up a shell company that he passed all the ECS wholesale purchases through. He marked the ECS merchandise up at his shell company and then authorized Fry's to purchase it at the marked up price.
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The executive was taking illegal kickbacks (vastly inflated commissions directly from suppliers), not doing what you're describing. ECS was probably one of the companies paying a lot in commissions to get ad product placement in combos though.

I don't hate ECS, but their best products are way behind them. Now they make purposely crippled products that have weird overclocking flakiness. There are ways around it, but the hassle is unnecessary. It's not like ECS has any high end products sold at Fry's to cannibalize.
 
sc0tty8 said:
I've never had issues with Biostar or ECS mobo's. I base a lot of my value-builds around those 2 brands. In fact, I have a Biostar mobo holding it down in one of my servers, and an ECS in my other server. The ECS board is about 7 years old, and has no issues. The Biostar is a bit newer, however, my old server had a 4yr old Biostar mobo in it.

Again, not seeing why these 2 brands are so "evil". Granted, they are not a board to use if you are wanting to overclock...oh wait, the server with the Biostar mobo is overclocked, and the ECS Setup ran overclocked for 5+ years...Shit, why are they so bad? Good bang for the buck IMO. Not a lot of top shelf features, but, all around a good bang for the buck.
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I ran my Pentium D 805 @ 4ghz for 2 years on the included combo ECS board from Fry's. :D
 
I'm running i7 920 oc'ed to 4ghz on biostar. Don't see what's the hoopla is all about, granted, I've never used biostar before their x58 mobo. Seems to be solid. In fact, I had bad experience with Abit and Asus in the past that I had to have replaced, I hope this biostar will hold out for a year or two until I move on to another cpu.
 
The funny thing about the ECS haters is that most of them have probably used and owned boards from them not knowing it. ECS is one of the largest mainboard manufactures in the world and contracts out a lot of stuff as well. Many other brands are made by ECS and they do have some very decent stuff. Most is not made for rock your socks off performance, but for a good machine they have some decent boards. A lot of the boards branded and sold as ECS in the marketplace are junk though.

In fact, I think Biostar is possibly made by them, along with many other brands.

I can confirm there stuff can be decent though, worked for a company that sold 100,000s of strictly ECS mainboard based machines for years.
 
I would take Biostar over ECS, however what concerns me more is the chipset on the board. Have seen a few combos lately with a Phenom and nvidia 6100 chipset motherboard. I owned a 6100 chipset motherboard when I was running an X2 3800 several years back, and I'm shocked these are still around.
Personally I wish they would give you the option of taking off 10$ if you decide you want to pass on a motherboard, or give you a partial credit towards buying a different motherboard. I know the theory behind it is if you buy the combo you might buy items not on sale, but I'm sure I'm not the only one that has a spare ECS motherboard in the closet as it was cheaper to buy the combo vs just the processor.
Either case due to the economy I have noticed fewer and fewer hot deals as these low cost leaders are the only thing people are buying.
 
I love the ECS combos at Fry's. The CPU + Mobo is $30 less than just the CPU alone, and I can usually net $20 selling the board to someone who just wants a really inexpensive board for a build. I have used about 10 ECS boards over the years, only had a DOA on one of them - the rest just plugged along forever until I got sick of them (one's on-board sound crapped out after a year).

Will be interesting to see if the combo deals stay good if this is true that ECS is gone from the combos. The Gigabyte or Asus combos have never seemed particularly appealing - basically $10 off the board, but the boards price is easily $10 higher than the Egg, so it's not worth the combo. Plus, how often is the Asus/Gigabyte combo the exact board you want?
 
My dirt-cheap ECS C2D combo overclocks great (BSEL mod) and has been running great. The combo on sale cost less than the CPU alone anywhere else. If I had bought a pricey overclocking board, it would have easily cost 2 or 3 times as much as I spent for my CPU/Motherboard.

ECS makes a lot of boards for big PC brands, so although it's not an enthusiast favorite, they seem to be solid enough for everyday use in budget systems.
 
You also have to remember, not everyone is going balls to the wall with their build. I built my nephew a system w/ the E8400 combo they had last year, no overclocking/all stock. For under $400 I made him a nice gaming system.
 
Considering what he was telling you about the E5200, I would be suspicious about anything he says about computers or computer related parts.

He might be a credible source for masturbation tips or whats coming up tonight on Cartoon Network but not computers.
 
pxc said:
The executive was taking illegal kickbacks (vastly inflated commissions directly from suppliers), not doing what you're describing. ECS was probably one of the companies paying a lot in commissions to get ad product placement in combos though.
Click to expand...

You're right, it wasn't just a markup. See link describing shell company for kickbacks:

http://www.sequence-inc.com/fraudfiles/2008/12/23/65-million-fraud-via-a-shell-company-scheme/

I wonder what they did with all the excess inventory. I know! Combo deals.
 
B2BigAl said:
Not that it really matters to me, since we don't have any fry's here, but I'd take an ECS mobo over a biostar anyday. I've built several systems with ECS boards and they've never given me a single problem.
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I love my biostar board. Ive never had a problem.
 
Never had an issue with my ECS 6100 board. Not the most feature-rich thing ever, but it's a stable little thing. My Biostar 790GX board is freaking awesome though. Cheap, stable, and has all of the overclocking options I'd expect in an Asus board. I like Biostar. IMO highly underrated.
 
the only 2 mobos I had issues where actually ECS and Biostar, they started giving me trouble around a year after purchase.
Pretty funny and ironic.
 
Oh man, of course now the prices have gone up $50+ on combos :(. I dont mind the stack of G31's sitting in the garage, but I sure will miss the deals. ECS were finally stable enough to build a system around for cheap too :(.
 
dengar said:
g31 is an insanely good mb i dont care what anybody says :p
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Looks like Fry's is clearancing the G31T-M. It's $25 in the LA/OC ad today. I'm going to pick one up as a spare. My only complaint is boosting 800MHz FSB CPUs on those requires a pad mod first, then the overclocking controls will work.

I wonder if the US division of ECS (ecsusa) will fold due to the bad economy and losing Fry's business. Many of their newer products never had (relatively) wide release in the US like the earlier products did.
 
I think ECS got a real bad rap because let's face it, it's an inexpensive board and the people that are going to use it are the people that have $20 500W power supplies. I bet more ECS boards were killed by cheap PSU's than actual failure because of the ECS board.
I've had 5 or 6 ECS boards and not a single one of them has ever done me wrong. I've had Abit boards continual blow out fan headers, Epox boards with non functional PS2 ports, I currently have a Gigabyte board that while not overclocked, it will drop my FSB from 266 (default) to 240.

When I want a stable board with standard features, I am not afraid to pick up the ECS box. Some of my friends would give me crap for having it, but I'm not the one with 10+ failures of e-VGA boards. I won't sacrifice long term reliability for short term (months) of a few frames a second more.
 
All ECS and Biostar boards I heve ever owned have failed prematurely, but at least the ECS ones lasted more than a year. My least favorite brands are Biostar, ECS and MSI. Every time I tried saving a few bucks on a mobo it was a huge mistake. Now I only buy Asus.
 
ECS is crap. always has been crap and always will be crap. Any ECS board i've seen has taken a dump prematurely.
 
My only opinion on ECS and Biostar is the same with any budget manufacturer. Some component will be cheaper. This can be random or constant like the Abit settlement a few years back when they purchased cheap capacitors. Don't get me wrong ASUS has made junk same as Gigacrap or MSI, but it's more common with ECS and Biostar. you run a Biostar or ECS for 2 years or more and it's very possible you'll see pieces coming off the boards or fizzling. I get that its unfair for a company to have to replace a warrantied part 10 or 20 years old, but these days I'm starting to prefer companies with 4+ year warranties.

ECS brand Motherboards warranty cover from ECS Invoice 36 months for parts and 24 months for part and labor.
- ECS brand Motherboards with CPU Bundle warranty cover from ECS Invoice 12 months for parts and labor.
- ECS brand VGA Card with NVIDIA Chipset warranty cover from ECS Invoice 36 months for parts and 24 months for part and labor.
- ECS brand VGA Cards with all other Chipset warranty cover from ECS Invoice 12 months for parts and labor.
- ECS brand all other products warranty cover from ECS Invoice 12 months warranty for parts and labor.


Couldnt get a good copy and paste on Biostar

But heres their wararnty polices

1 year standard.
 
ive never been a fan of biostar or ecs.....but in all fairness my brother had a pent 3 that had an ecs board and it worked good for years. i just prefer to spend a bit more on a board to get better features. i try to get 3 to 5 years out of my gaming systems.
 
Every ECS board I've had died of some miserable cause. I'm a big fan of Biostar, their boards works great in all my builds (approximately 20 builds so far using Biosar).

But as always, check reviews on the boards... even good brand names can have craptastic boards out there.
 
My biostar tforce has been the best quality mobo I have ever used.
Bring on the combos! E5200 combo for $100 would be nice ;-)
 
I've never had any motherboard problems so far over my past 7-8 personal builds. Lately I've been into Biostar since they have most of the features of boards that are priced 50% more. So for me, Biostar has been great.

I've used ECS in the past and can only say that they perform like a standard OEM board. Nothing wrong with them at all.

The only board I've owned that has failed on me has been an old DFI board but that was running for over 5 years so I don't really count it as a bad board.
 
Not that I really care but since I've had experience with Biostar mobos I'm interested in seeing what they offer.
 
i had an ecs matx board (ati chipset) for a while in an xcube, then put it in a build for a business customer who still uses it as a file server/email server 4 or 5 years later, 24/7/52.
i had the original biostar tforce, the tforce 6100 939, and it was great. last year i had the tpower ip45 and wasnt thrilled, board was ok, bios was less than average. if you have ever owned an abit board, you have owned ecs. also, there is good chance that biostar is manufactyred by ecs, as they dont seem like they were manufactured by asus or foxconn.
 
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