Whould you recommend an ECS

Im also of the thought to stay away from ECS, they are a 2nd tier manufacturer (not that they are all bad) the support doesnt seem all that great. And dont hold me to it but i think they are the ones that are (or at least rumoured) to be getting out of the mobo buisness soon.

I owned an ECS motherboard about 5 years ago. It was not bad for regular styff, but for overclocking it lacked a lot of options. I can't really talk about todays motherboards, since i can only tell you what i read about them on reviews. Still they lack quite a way behind other motherboard manufacturers, mostly in the BIOS area, hence if you plan on overclocking you will probably be quite limited. For a stock motherboard it should be ok and quite cheap, but not a lot cheaper. I think it is worth spending another 20-30 dollars and get a decent motherboard with overclocking options to boot.

I dont recommend going out of your way to buy an ECS motherboard. I have used them and for the most part have actually had good luck with them. They are not the most reliable motherboards and if you ever shop Frys Electronics you will see that ECS is the most returned brand and the salespeople there go out of their way to tell you so.

Do yourself a favor and go buy a Gigabyte or an ASUS brand. There are other good brands but the two I recommend are brands I regularly use and can recommend from my experience.

If the ECS is a to good to be true deal or is free then give it a try but dont choose it over a better brand if you have to pay full price for it...

ECS and PC Chips are the same company, I owned 3 boards that were the same. The only one that worked was the ECS one. I ran it for 3 years, until I built a new system. Nothing fancy but just a board. I would buy ECS over Asrock.

So...What brand would you say was a good one?

I'd go with asus, msi, or gigabyte. And if you are this unsure about your pick, download the board manual before ordering and look it over. Some are easy to understand, and some are ridiculous. You can also check the website for tested memory brands.

My picks would be:

1) Gigabyte or DFI
2)ASUS
3)MSI

That is personal though but i would recommend kepping MSI last. In most of the reviews it has at least one major problem, like no booting or no overclocking or lack of support, etc. But in general they are pretty good, but i would definitely prefer some other vendor instead of MSI.

ECS is a 1st tier motherboard manufacturer, in fact the second largest behind ASUS according to motherboard shipments. 1st tier manufacturers are ASUS, ECS, Gigabyte, and MSI. 2nd tier manufacturers are basically everyone else. Foxconn could be considered 1st tier except that motherboards are not Foxconn's principal business and a substantial amount of Foxconn's motherboard production is actually done using contract manufacturers (like ECS).

Whether you know it or not, there is a fair chance you have owned a motherboard that was either manufactured or designed by ECS. e.g. ASUS, ABIT, ASRock, Fujitsu Seimens, and several others have used ECS either to design or manufacture mainboards. Unlike ASUS, which does not manufacture any motherboards that aren't stamped with "ASUSTEK" or "ASUS" somewhere on it, even if they are supplying it to OEM computer makers (e.g. HP), ECS manufactures millions of contract motherboards that someone else markets under their own brand or label.

If you are comparing $60 ECS board to $60 board from ASUS, MSI, or Gigabyte, there is going to be little difference in quality or features. If you are comparing a $60 ECS board to a $120 board from ASUS, MSI, or Gigabyte, then you are obviously retarded.

I know its the Fud and all but
http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=9784&Itemid=1

and obviously not big enough to get on the SLI bandwagon either.
http://www.nvidia.com/object/io_1224586792565.html

It would be appropriate to categorize ECS as a 2nd tier graphics card manufacturer, but not motherboard manufacturer. Besides...

Nvidia says no truth to reports

More like, not big enough into premium enthusiast motherboards. DFI is about 15 times smaller than ECS in terms of units shipped. EVGA doesn't even manufacture motherboards. It uses NVIDIA reference boards, which are usually manufactured by Foxconn.

If you include Foxconn, then ECS is the third largest motherboard manufacturer in the world, in terms of units shipped. You could say ECS is 2nd tier, it just means Gigabyte and MSI become 2nd tier as well, while everyone else becomes 3rd tier (with ASUS and Foxconn on top).

I have had stability issues with the ECS/elite group/pc chips boards before.(socket 478)

I would stick to the Gigabyte, ASUS and MSI lineup. You can generally pick one up that only costs 5-10 bucks over an ECS board.

I found the mobo I my choice... Thanks for your input...

ECS customer support is awful... or should I say non-existant. I've had a post on their customer support site for a 5 days now and no reply.

ECS use to manufacturer cheap (crappy chipset) motherboards that Fry's sold as a combo with CPUs, lots of those motherboards were returned, that contributed to their poor reputation.

I personally would have no problem using current ECS boards.
I'm currently looking at getting a new ECS right now.

well for my first build i got the GF8200A
it supports 4 sata hard drives (5 sata ports the 5th is for RAID)
32GB of RAM up to 1066mhz spead
supports all AM2 AM2+ and if you do a bios uppgrade you can use the new AM3 CPUs
it has an IDE channell for 2 devices.
supports up to two floppies
integrated pgraphicas can play all hd content (up to blu ray)
the IO has HDMI, VGA, 6 channell audio, 6 USB 1 eSata, gigabit Ethernet,
PCIx16 2.0
2 Mini PCIe
3 PCI

i highly recomend it as i have no problems with it

overclocking works ok, i went from 2.6ghz to 2.8 easilly without more voltage. if you go to CPU frequence 220 (mine is on 216, 218 works) it boots but XP flashes the screan like crazy. (im a noob at OCing)

over all i would recomend this board to any one.