ECS X48T-A Black Edition Motherboard Review :: ECS X48T-A Black Edition Layout

The CPU area of the motherboard is clear of obstacles with a row of solid capacitors on top of the CPU socket and a row of capacitors on the right hand side of the CPU Socket. The left hand side and the bottom of the socket are clear of capacitors. Note the use of solid capacitors will prevent leaks of capacitors and will be much less likely to break off than regular capacitors.

The Northbridge is covered by a heatsink with the QoolTeCH II logo on it. The Southbridge is covered by a small heatsink with the ECS logo on it. A heatpipe leads out from the SB to the NB, with another heatpipe leading out to the rear heatsink. In operation with a QX9770, the heatsink got warm but the system worked pretty well, with no issues as to heat during full load testing.

The 8-pin power connector is below the rear QoolTech heatsink, as the heatsink covers the area the 8-pin power connector would normally go on the motherboard. The 24-pin power connector is on the lower right hand side of the motherboard, right where it should be. ECS has also included a 4-pin Molex connector on the motherboard for stable operations when Crossfired video cards are installed.

The device expansion on this board consists of two PCI Express x16 Generation 2.0 slots, two PCI Express x1 slots and two PCI slots. Plenty of room is on the board to install two HD 4870 X2 video cards if necessary. A 2-slot video card might block two or even more of the SATA ports on the bottom of the board if it is long enough, such as a GeForce GTX280, but it is an acceptable compromise that won’t affect most people.

Serial ATA is the primary interface by which HDDs and optical drives such as Blu-Ray and HD-DVD drives are sold on the market today. The X48T-A board has six SATA ports placed on the bottom left side of the board under the SB heatsink area. The board also has a single FDD and IDE port for floppy disk drives and IDE optical drives. One serious issue with this board is the single 3-pin Fan connector. For a X48 board supposedly targeted at the enthusiast, one Fan connector does not cut it.

Onboard sound is handled by the Realtek ALC889A CODEC. This CODEC is a 10 channel CODEC that supports 7.1 and 2-channel Front Panel Audio at the same time and is the latest in Realtek’s arsenal of onboard sound devices. Onboard audio has improved to the point where the latest and greatest from Creative Labs simply doesn’t offer enough of an upgrade to the onboard solutions to warrant sales like they had before when the onboard audio was limited.

The rear IO on the board is chock full of everything you need. SPDIF In/Out and Coaxial ports are on the rear as well as 5 ports for the onboard sound. Six USB 2.0 ports are good enough for most users and more can be added via bracket. An external SATA port is present to take advantage of external SATA devices like external HDDs. Rounding out the IO is the PS/2 mouse, keyboard and a COM1 port for legacy devices. Personally, I would prefer companies to include more USB ports than include the COM1 port or PS/2 mouse port but compatibility is still a concern. There are also two LAN ports on the board one controlled by the ICH9R chip the other by a Realtek PHY. The board supports Teaming which allows the LANs to work together effectively making it a 2Gb LAN.