ECS A780GM-A "Black Series"

F

fuelvolts

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jan 24, 2005
Messages
1,813
What are some people's thoughts on this board? I'm looking for an AM2+ to replace my crappy ECS 6100 mATX board that came free from a Fry's bundle last Fall.

Newegg Link

EDIT: Forgot to say that I'm looking to spend less than $80 with shipping

TIA
 
The board looks pretty nice to me...Ive used ecs boards from time to time and ive had good results..Their not really known for o/clocking but some light o/clocking on this board may be possible...for what you can afford id take a chance on it...you can always return it if you dont like it or if you happen to get a defective board...some people have very negative opinions on ecs but alot of people have had real good luck with them...for a stock board and only being able to afford 80 dollars id dive in and play around with it.....
 
I like ECS. I've had good luck with them over the years. The best socket-A mobo I've used was the K7S5A which had developed cult status over the years. Not the flashiest or the most overclockable baords, but they're made well.

Having said that, I just went though the process of picking a 780G board, and after a lot of time spent looking at all the choices at newegg, I ended up ordering the Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-SH2 because it was the only board that had all the features I wanted.

The ECS got eliminated because I couldn't live with the fact that the onboard video didn't have DVI output, only HDMI & Dsub. That's the only thing that kept me from getting it. If you're ok with that, I wouldn't hesitate to get it.
 
Well, it took me over a month to talk myself into spending $$$ on a new mobo, but I finally bought it. I will keep this thread updated when I get it installed in about 3-4 days.
 
Hmm, I just got my A780GM-A in, and the IDE controller is bad. Won't detect anything hooked up via IDE without giving me POST errors. Heck, the thing will still give me IDE POST errors when there's not even an IDE cable hooked up.
 
that sucks, sorry man. hopefully I don't have that problem. I have an IDE HD (holds only my backups) and DVD+RW. The IDE controller on my current mobo went out to, so I bought a PCI-e 1x SATAII/IDE controller, so I'll use that if necessary.

The main reason I wanted a new motherboard in the first place is the current one I have is a mATX and I hate mATX cases in workstations. Also, it only has 2 SATA ports and is AM2 only (not AM2+). It was a freebie from Fry's with my 4800+ from last August.

I want to go Phenom when I can get one for <$100 (which will be a while).
 
The motherboard came in today, but, alas I am at work and will not be able to install it for 4.5 more hours. Ugh!

Will update after it is installed.
 
turns out newegg shipped me the updated v1.1 of this motherboard. There aren't even any reviews of a v1.1 version of this board. The only thing that I can tell that is different is that this motherboard has onboard power/reset button, whereas the v1.0 does not have them.
 
any updates over the weekend? i know a lot of people have had bad experiences with ecs boards, and having stacks of refurbbed ecs boards at fry's can't help, but its so hard to resist their prices!
 
sorry for no updates.

Mobo works great. No fuss. The only complaint that I have is that the 4 pin 12v CPU header is located near the "top" (on a tower) of the motherboard. This is not normally a problem, but I have an Antec P180B, which means the psu is on the bottom of the case, not the top. It has to stretch over the gpu and is very tight. At first I thought it wasn't going to work and I said a few choice words ;) .

All in all a great buy. I finally have working IDE and USB2 ports! It's also a lot faster and my HD tach transfer rates went up about 7% across the board (I have 4 Hard drives).

Vista x64 doesn't really cooperate with my old Audigy 2 card. I'm going to try the onboard IDT 92HD206 7.1 sound to see if it is better. I can't listen to foobar 2000 with my Audigy and foobar 2000 is more important than the Audigy.

And for the rebate, I need the serial # of the mobo and I'l be damned if I can find it anywhere. Gonna look for it again when I take out the Audigy tonight.

Cheers.
 
Oh and the onboard power/reset switches are nice but impossible to reach with everything installed. The buttons are right were the cables come out of the bottom of the case from the PSU. P180 owners will understand what I mean.
 
Yuuuuh word on the power plugs, they all the way on top, my power supply is on the otehr end. had to get an extention for my 4 pin power plug.

But the Board runs super smooth with IDE SATA Vista. HDMI output works great on mines also.

I read review that this bad boi is a great budget over clocker and can handle Black editon Am2+ very nicely.
 
fuelvolts said:
sorry for no updates.

Mobo works great. No fuss. The only complaint that I have is that the 4 pin 12v CPU header is located near the "top" (on a tower) of the motherboard. This is not normally a problem, but I have an Antec P180B, which means the psu is on the bottom of the case, not the top. It has to stretch over the gpu and is very tight. At first I thought it wasn't going to work and I said a few choice words ;) .
*snip*
Click to expand...

I had the same problem with an old ECS board I had so I picked up an extender at the local Fry's. It was just too damn tight for me to be comfortable with.
 
Yea, I've heard that the audigy 2 doesn't like vista.

Does the rebate really want the serial number? Most of the rebates I send want the original UPC.
 
The onboard sound sounded TERRIBLE. Clicking and popping whenever the volume was turned slightly up. I was a little upset. Then I decided to flash the bios. There was a new one. The program wouldn't work with Vista x63 SPI. I had to turn off unsigned driver support, rename the 64 bit .sys file (it was all uppercase, changed to all lowercase) and run as administrator to get it just to flash the bios.

After I figured out how to flash the stupid bios, low and behold, the onboard sound sounds pretty decent now. Not as good as my Audigy 2, but acceptable until creative creates decent drivers for the Audigy 2 and stops blaming Microsoft.
 
hummm mines sounds nice, but i am using the HDMI sound out put.
You using the standard jack audio ?
 
yeah, just using regular 3.5 jacks. It sounds fine now after the bios update.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top