ECS A890GXM-A Motherboard

Voltage Regulator

ECS A890GXM-A comes with a seven-phase voltage regulator circuit. From the seven available phases, six are used to generate the CPU main voltage (Vcore) while the other one is used to generate the voltage required by the integrated memory controller. Thus this motherboard has a “6+1” configuration. A series of seven LEDs allow you to monitor which phases are being used.

This motherboard comes with a passive heatsink installed on top of the transistors from the voltage regulator circuit, connected to the passive heatsink that is installed on top of the north bridge chip using a U-shaped heatpipe. It is nice to see ECS improving the quality of their products. In Figure 8, you can see the voltage regulator circuit with this cooling solution installed and, in Figure 9, with it removed.

Figure 8: Voltage regulator circuit.

Figure 9: Voltage regulator circuit.

As mentioned earlier, all capacitors used on this motherboard are solid and the voltage regulator circuit uses ferri
te chokes, which are better than iron chokes. Please read our Everything You Need to Know About the Motherboard Voltage Regulator tutorial for more information.