ECS GANK Drone L337 Gaming Motherboard

H

HardOCP News

[H] News
Joined
Dec 31, 1969
Messages
0
Legit Reviews spent a little quality time with the ECS GANK Drone L337 motherboard today. How does it perform? I don't know, you'll have to read the review. I just like saying L337 GANK Drone. ;)

ECS is working on making a bigger name for themselves. Recently they have been coming out with motherboards like the GANK Machine Z87H3-A2X Extreme that are targeted at the enthusiast level market. Today we have a second motherboard from the ECS L337 gaming series of boards, the GANK Drone Z87H3-A3X. The Drone is still targeted at enthusiasts, though more at the enthusiast on a budget as the Drone Z87H3-A3X is hitting the streets with a price tag of only $119.99!
Click to expand...
 
I have an ECS board, the X79R-AX Deluxe. It is literally the worst POS board I have ever witnessed. I made a little shrine for it so it doesn't try to posess my soul. I definitely wouldn't want to admit to owning something named the GANK drone L337.
 
I bought an ECS board back in the NF4 days. I got rid of it a month later. I would give it another shot though for 119.
 
I had an ECS Board.

ECS K7S5A, it was alright.

Its amazing how I can remember motherboard part numbers after all these years.
 
GANK as in steal your $119? I've been pretty happy with R.O.G. I've used way too many motherboards that just need replacing and end up spending more money in the long run to try and penny pinch with stuff like mobos. Back in the day, (even though they were not cheap), I never did buy an Abit motherboard that lasted longer than six months. I think I gave up after 3 of them. Should have stopped at 2, who knows why I didn't.
 
Betaboy1983 said:
GANK as in steal your $119? I've been pretty happy with R.O.G. I've used way too many motherboards that just need replacing and end up spending more money in the long run to try and penny pinch with stuff like mobos. Back in the day, (even though they were not cheap), I never did buy an Abit motherboard that lasted longer than six months. I think I gave up after 3 of them. Should have stopped at 2, who knows why I didn't.
Click to expand...

Only good Abit board I had was the NF7-S. Pretty sure it still works. I had several others that sucked though.
 
Everything about the name of that product makes me want to punch their marketing team right in the dick.
 
StillFunkyB said:
This thing looks like a peice of shit.
Click to expand...

It really does. Engineering and component selection on it looks cut rate as all hell. Spacing on the DIMM slots is off, components are crooked as hell, chokes look cheap, heat sink looks cheap, it's full of x1 slots, and it has a D-Sub connector. Nothing l337 about that. The chipset cooler looks like something from the 486 or Pentium days. The MOSFET cooling looks like it wouldn't work very well at all and was designed purely for looks. Seems like a 4+2 phase power design dating back to the turn of the century. And is that a single phase I see for the DIMM slots? :eek: And you've got to love those vertical SATA connectors. :rolleyes: I'm not sure it's a good deal even at $119.99.

The overclock they got was impressive but I doubt you could run it very long that way.
 
How can a motherboard be both enthusiast level and a budget board...

Don't let them gank your wallet!
 
ssnyder28 said:
How can a motherboard be both enthusiast level and a budget board...

Don't let them gank your wallet!
Click to expand...

Well there are some enthusiast oriented boards on the lower end of the price spectrum. The problem is balancing the needed quality with the required feature set. More often than not I think companies fail to strike the right balance with such products.
 
As I remember from my early days of computer building, ECS was the lowest of the low. If you didn't have money for anything good, you got the ECS. Worst components, bad layout, poor quality control, just basic functions, but the price was half of Asus/MSI.

Don't know how they fare right now, but my experience with their earlier product tells me to stay away from them as far as I can :)

In the old days, one usually should have avoided ECS motherboards and Palit / Creative GFX cards (yes, creative used to make gfx cards, and they sucked balls :p), while Palit had problem with exploding capacitors :)
 
StillFunkyB said:
Only good Abit board I had was the NF7-S. Pretty sure it still works. I had several others that sucked though.
Click to expand...

The only one I remember off hand was my Abit BH7-II. It never 'died' but I have never had so many problems in my life. Lots of individual parts testing with no problems but put it all back together in the Abit system and the BSOD was my screensaver.
 
I don't know what you abit guys are talking about, Abit was the shit. I never had a single problem with any of mine, and I owned a ton of their boards.

I only bought Abit until they went under.

Hell the bp6 may be the greatest motherboard in the history of history.
 
MorgothPl said:
As I remember from my early days of computer building, ECS was the lowest of the low. If you didn't have money for anything good, you got the ECS. Worst components, bad layout, poor quality control, just basic functions, but the price was half of Asus/MSI.

Don't know how they fare right now, but my experience with their earlier product tells me to stay away from them as far as I can :)

In the old days, one usually should have avoided ECS motherboards and Palit / Creative GFX cards (yes, creative used to make gfx cards, and they sucked balls :p), while Palit had problem with exploding capacitors :)
Click to expand...

The higher end ECS boards, even those dating back a few years really weren't that bad but they always fell short on their BIOS' not being up to the task of a decent overclock. Lower end ECS boards on the other hand were naturally terrible.
 
The last ECS board I got was a socket AM2 board. The only issue I had was with the memory slots. I bought the board from Fry's since it was cheaper than the others they had there. I put in 4 DDR2 memory sticks, but OS kept telling me it only saw half of it. I thought it was the OS, but it wasn't. I tested each memory slot with each memory stick. No problems. Tested two sticks next in alternating slots, no problems. Put in 3 sticks, saw only total memory from 2 out of the 3 sticks no matter what slots they were in. Checked BIOS. Nothing I could find was affecting it. I bought another 2 memory sticks thinking I had bad RAM, didn't fix it. Ended up returning the board (and extra RAM), and splurging for the higher priced Gigabyte board.

Haven't bought an ECS board since. I don't know how they are now, but I've read complaints of ECS boards over the years since then, and they vary wildly on different tech forums and computer websites. Everything I've read amounts to the following: bad memory slots, bad materials, bad components, bad CPU sockets, bad VRMs/MOSFETs, bad BIOS, bad chipsets, etc.

I thought MSI boards were worse, but ECS probably lowest of the low in terms of quality.
 
You sure as heck don't get anything in the box do you. But you really aren't getting a motherboard either. The gold caps caught my eye though I must admit. That said, if you polish a turd you still got a turd..........

Edit: Wow that was pretty impressive though. Gave the gigabyte a run for the money. I could imagine that thing catching on fire or blowing up overclocked for a long while though.
 
Last edited:
Dan_D said:
It really does. Engineering and component selection on it looks cut rate as all hell. Spacing on the DIMM slots is off, components are crooked as hell, chokes look cheap, heat sink looks cheap, it's full of x1 slots, and it has a D-Sub connector. Nothing l337 about that. The chipset cooler looks like something from the 486 or Pentium days. The MOSFET cooling looks like it wouldn't work very well at all and was designed purely for looks. Seems like a 4+2 phase power design dating back to the turn of the century. And is that a single phase I see for the DIMM slots? :eek: And you've got to love those vertical SATA connectors. :rolleyes: I'm not sure it's a good deal even at $119.99.

The overclock they got was impressive but I doubt you could run it very long that way.
Click to expand...
Please do a review on this thing and so we can all laugh ECS out of the enthusiast sector once and for all with that [H] Fail logo.

%5BH%5DardOCP%20fail.jpg


ECS is a brand that should have died years ago.
 
CaptNumbNutz said:
Please do a review on this thing and so we can all laugh ECS out of the enthusiast sector once and for all with that [H] Fail logo.

%5BH%5DardOCP%20fail.jpg


ECS is a brand that should have died years ago.
Click to expand...

While that would be fun, it makes more sense to review products that the readers would actually consider buying. :D
 
Dan_D said:
While that would be fun, it makes more sense to review products that the readers would actually consider buying. :D
Click to expand...

That may be true, but some sites like JonnyGuru get traffic from me just for their reviews of total failure products. I love reading that stuff.
 
LigTasm said:
That may be true, but some sites like JonnyGuru get traffic from me just for their reviews of total failure products. I love reading that stuff.
Click to expand...
I do enjoy reading about train wrecks and terrible solder jobs.
 
LigTasm said:
That may be true, but some sites like JonnyGuru get traffic from me just for their reviews of total failure products. I love reading that stuff.
Click to expand...

Ihaveworms said:
I do enjoy reading about train wrecks and terrible solder jobs.
Click to expand...

Oh I do too. I just don't think it will happen. I've wanted to do a motherboard article which searches for the worst of the worst and reads as a cautionary tale of "boards to avoid". I just don't think that Kyle will want to devote resources to it.
 
Dan_D said:
Oh I do too. I just don't think it will happen. I've wanted to do a motherboard article which searches for the worst of the worst and reads as a cautionary tale of "boards to avoid". I just don't think that Kyle will want to devote resources to it.
Click to expand...

I'll send you a sweet ECS board to test. Just be aware it doesn't POST unless the CLR CMOS jumper is in the clear position, so it won't save any settings. Also, if you try to manually add CPU voltage you'll have to leave the battery out for 3 to 6 months for it to be able to turn on again.
 
LigTasm said:
I'll send you a sweet ECS board to test. Just be aware it doesn't POST unless the CLR CMOS jumper is in the clear position, so it won't save any settings. Also, if you try to manually add CPU voltage you'll have to leave the battery out for 3 to 6 months for it to be able to turn on again.
Click to expand...

Wow. That sounds hilarious.
 
LigTasm said:
I'll send you a sweet ECS board to test. Just be aware it doesn't POST unless the CLR CMOS jumper is in the clear position, so it won't save any settings. Also, if you try to manually add CPU voltage you'll have to leave the battery out for 3 to 6 months for it to be able to turn on again.
Click to expand...

I almost spit on my work computer when I read this.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top