ECS announced that it has three new motherboards coming based on Intel’s 200-series chipsets.
ECS plans to initially use two motherboards targeted at gamers to handle the Z270 market. The Z270-Lightsaber is the more potent of the two boards, featuring a 14-phase power design and support for up to three graphics cards in a multi-GPU configuration. It also supports a Killer E2500 gigabit NIC, and it has a U.2 port.
The Z270H4-I isn’t quite as feature rich as the Z270-Lightsaber, but it’s a mini-ITX board and is thus targeted at a slightly different market. It does come with two gigabit NICs and a Wi-Fi card to give you an ample array of internet connection options.
ECS installed Realtek ALC1150 audio codecs on both of its Z270 boards, and it also incorporated its LEET Superior Audio software technology to further enhance the auditory performance. The company also said that both of these boards can support DDR4 RAM clocked up to 3,200MHz.
To compete in the micro-ATX form factor market, ECS announced the B250H4-M8/M8S. This board offers a more modest feature set, and it supports RAM up to 2,133MHz. The company didn’t tell us much about this board, though.
The Z270 boards are expected to be released on January 5. We do not have release information for the B250H4-M8/M8S, nor do we have pricing information for the other boards at this time.
| ECS 200-Series Motherboards | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Model/Spec | Z270-Lightsaber (a.k.a. Z270H4-A) | Z270H4-I | B250H4-M8/M8S |
| Form Factor | ATX | Mini-ITX | Micro-ATX |
| Memory Support | 4 x DDR4 DIMMs Up To 3,200MHz | 2 x DDR4 DIMMs Up To 3,200MHz | 2 x DDR4 DIMMs Up To 2,133 MHz |
| Power Phases | 14 | 6 | N/A |
| PCI/PCI-E | -5 x PCI-E x1-3 x PCI-E x 16 | PCI-E x16 | -PCI-2 x PCI-E x1-PCI-E x16 |
| Networking | Killer E2500 Gigabit LAN | -Intel WGI 219V Gigabit LAN-Realtek 8118A-Gigabit LAN | Realtek RTL8111GN Gigabit Controller |
| Audio | -Realtek ALC 1150-LEET Superior Audio II | -Realtek ALC 1150-LEET Superior Audio | Realtek ALC892 |
| Ports | -6 x SATA-III-M.2 Key M-U.2-USB Type-C | -4 x SATA-III-M.2 Key M-M.2 Key E-USB Type-C | -SATA-M.2 Key M |