ECS A990FXM-A Motherboard

Conclusions

It is always good to see manufacturers improving their products. It seems that ECS has finally retired the colorful designer that they had on their team, and decided to focus on adding more features on their motherboards.

The A990FXM-A is a good option if you want a motherboard for your current or future AMD CPU with several additional features, such as three PCI Express x16 slots, two eSATA-600 ports, two Gigabit Ethernet ports, a Bluetooth receiver (by the way, this is the first time we’ve seen this feature on a motherboard from this manufacturer), a POST diagnostics display, on-board optical SPDIF output, and an ATA-133 port. And, of course, it comes with four USB 3.0 ports and six SATA-600 ports.

The only aspect that ECS still has room for improvement is on the voltage regulator circuit (which could have more phases, especially for the memory controller voltage) and overclocking options.

The MSRP of this motherboard, of USD 220, may seem high compared to the price of competing products such as the Gigabyte 990FXA-UD5 (USD 190) and MSI 990FXA-GD80 (USD 195) at Newegg.com. However, Newegg.com and other online stores rarely sell motherboards at their suggested price, so the price of the ECS A990FXM-A should be lower when it arrives on the market. (At least
we hope so.)