ECS HDC-I Motherboard Review
On-board Peripherals
Contents
The chip paired with the E-350 CPU is called by the manufacturer “FCH” (Fusion Controller Hub), and the model used on the HDC-I is the A50M. This chip supports six SATA-600 ports (no RAID support), and the board comes with four SATA-600 ports and one eSATA-600 port.
Figure 5: SATA-600 ports
This motherboard has 10 USB 2.0 ports, six soldered on the rear panel and four available through two headers located on the motherboard. It also has two USB 3.0 ports, available on the motherboard rear panel, controlled by an ASMedia ASM1042 chip.
This motherboard doesn’t have FireWire ports, nor does it have IDE, floppy, legacy parallel or serial ports.
The ECS HDC-I supports 7.1 audio format. On this motherboard, the audio is generated by the chipset using a VIA VT1708B codec. The specifications of this chip include 100 dB signal-to-noise ratio for the analog outputs, 95 dB signal-to-noise ratio for the analog inputs, up to 192 kHz sampling rate for both inputs and outputs, and 24-bit resolution. These specifications are good for the mainstream user, but if you are looking into working professionally with audio editing, you should look for a motherboard that provides an SNR of at least 97 dB for the analog input.
This motherboard has one Gigabit Ethernet port, controlled by an Atheros AR8151 chip.
In Figure 6, you can see the motherboard rear panel, with six USB 2.0 ports, HDMI port, VGA and DVI video outputs, one eSATA-600 port, a Gigabit Ethernet port, two USB 3.0 ports (blue connectors), Bluetooth adapter, and audio connectors. There is no PS/2 port for mouse or keyboard.
Figure 6: Motherboard rear panel