Abit cedes manufacturing to ECS?

[purrkur]

Found this article at The Inquirer...

[Billl]

That just plain sucks!


Billl

[purrkur]

I guess the smaller mobo makers are struggling to survive...

[Derek]

Aw no! ECS of all companies!

[purrkur]

Update

[Billl]

Update

Looks like it's time to find a new board manufacturer. Because I sure ain't building anything with an ECS board in it! Anyone have any thoughts on what boards they are going to use in the future?

Billl

[davd_bob]

after reading purrkur's update, i wonder who else is outsourcing?

personally i don't recall any particularly bad ECS boards i've ever used, they just dont have much to play with in the bios for OC'ers.

[Billl]

after reading purrkur's update, i wonder who else is outsourcing?

personally i don't recall any particularly bad ECS boards i've ever used, they just dont have much to play with in the bios for OC'ers.

They always were know in the past for total crap. Maybe things have changed over the years. But as I recall no one ever wanted to build a system with one of their boards. I'd have to see some proof of this before I consider anything built by them being put in one of my machines.


Billl

[purrkur]

ECS has always been a player in the budget/value segment so their products have always been stripped of features and functionality and they have been known to use cheap components for their motherboards (meaning both cheap in price and cheap as in crap quality).

I have one of their boards, the infamous K7S5A. This board has been rock solid in terms of stability, but some time ago I bought myself an ASUS motherboard for my main machine so I moved the ECS board over to my wifes machine. As I was picking it out of the box I noticed 3 caps that were bulging (all around the voltage regulator for the CPU). So I replaced the leaking ones and a few others and it is still running like a champ (I never reached a stage of instability regardless of the bulging caps).

It was a cheap board and some might say you get what you pay for but I would gladly have paid $10-15 more if it would have meant working caps. This board is not that old.

Anyway, I am not buying ECS again. My ASUS board is quite impressive actually. It has a decent amount of features, overclockable, stable and no caps are bulging! For a real budget board I think I would go with ASRock which is a rebranded ASUS if I am not mistaken. There are many other good manufacturers out there so I am not worried that I won't be able to pick out quality products.

As for Abit/ECS, I can imagine that Abit will be specifying all components that are needed for ECS to build their products but not manufacturers of those. I suspect quality will suffer.

[Billl]

ECS has always been a player in the budget/value segment so their products have always been stripped of features and functionality and they have been known to use cheap components for their motherboards (meaning both cheap in price and cheap as in crap quality).

I have one of their boards, the infamous K7S5A. This board has been rock solid in terms of stability, but some time ago I bought myself an ASUS motherboard for my main machine so I moved the ECS board over to my wifes machine. As I was picking it out of the box I noticed 3 caps that were bulging (all around the voltage regulator for the CPU). So I replaced the leaking ones and a few others and it is still running like a champ (I never reached a stage of instability regardless of the bulging caps).

It was a cheap board and some might say you get what you pay for but I would gladly have paid $10-15 more if it would have meant working caps. This board is not that old.

Anyway, I am not buying ECS again. My ASUS board is quite impressive actually. It has a decent amount of features, overclockable, stable and no caps are bulging! For a real budget board I think I would go with ASRock which is a rebranded ASUS if I am not mistaken. There are many other good manufacturers out there so I am not worried that I won't be able to pick out quality products.

As for Abit/ECS, I can imagine that Abit will be specifying all components that are needed for ECS to build their products but not manufacturers of those. I suspect quality will suffer.

Yea I think ASUS will be my next board maker too. I've always liked their products. Just haven't bought any since I got hooked on Abit. It's really too bad Abit is doing this. not that I'm gonna need to build anything anytime soon. I now have 12 machines up and running. I'm running out of space.


Billl

[Merlin55]

I have one of those infamous ECS mobo's. Its never given me a bit of trouble. I upgraded the bios till they stopped issuing updates. We still use it. When I bought the system with the mobo I was told it was expandable.....lying salesmen are no suprise....but since there are no K3 500's rushing to be bought, theres not much that can be done to it. Still it has been a reliable little work horse all these years. Can't say as I can fault them for this particular unit, wish I could remember the model number off hand though :/ P5 something or other. Still one would think if Abit engineers a decent board and sets the specs, you'd still get a good product.

[kuun]

actually..

ECS boards are good for overclockers..

i have an ECS K7S5A mainboard that powers my amd xp 2200+

i've never had a bit of trouble out of it..

the k7s5a also has tons mroe options in the bios for OCin than the bp6.. ofc it is newer...