ECS "Black Series" P45T-A

[Rob Williams]

Need to build a new rig on the cheap? Need modest Crossfire support, and a decent feature-set? The ECS P45T-A might be worthy of your consideration, as it packs in a good amount of functionality, solid performance, a cool color scheme and of course, a good price tag, of around $110.

You can read the full review here and discuss it here.

 

[Tech-Daddy]

NIce review Rob...

I did notice something that made my hair (yes, singular... 1 hair.... shaddup Greg! ) stand on end.

The placement of the SATA ports pointing straight up off of the board.

You load up 2 full sized video cards with their double spaced coolers, a majority of those ports are now lost. I ran into the pain while building Deuce, and I am now a HUGE fan of the 90 degree, side edge mounted SATA ports. Seems to make SO much more sense.

I wish more manufacturers would do their sata ports that way...

*shrug*
-=TD

 

[Rob Williams]

It's a huge problem, and one I plan to speak about to ECS when I talk to them in a few weeks time. The S-ATA placement was a little worse on the X48T-A board, but if you do have two large GPUs, say goodbye.

The new 90-degree ports are FAR more sensible, and I agree, I hope to see it more often. Seems to be the feature of an enthusiast board right now though, sadly.

 

[Unregistered]

Not knock your socks off?

Seems to me it is within a few percentage points of the performance of it's much more expensive brethren. So unless I really want to overclock, the performance at the price point does indeed knock my socks off.

 

[Rob Williams]

Besides the performance factor itself, there is more to the board, like a rich BIOS, good feature-set, non-clunky board layout, overall presentation... none of these were that good on this board.

The performance is good, and as long as you don't mind the downsides, you'll be happy.