ECS Battles With A New Z270 Lightsaber

By Michael Justin Allen Sexton
published

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.

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ECS 200-Series Motherboards
Model/SpecZ270-Lightsaber (a.k.a. Z270H4-A)Z270H4-IB250H4-M8/M8S
Form FactorATXMini-ITXMicro-ATX
Memory Support4 x DDR4 DIMMs Up To 3,200MHz2 x DDR4 DIMMs Up To 3,200MHz2 x DDR4 DIMMs Up To 2,133 MHz
Power Phases146N/A
PCI/PCI-E-5 x PCI-E x1-3 x PCI-E x 16PCI-E x16-PCI-2 x PCI-E x1-PCI-E x16
NetworkingKiller E2500 Gigabit LAN-Intel WGI 219V Gigabit LAN-Realtek 8118A-Gigabit LANRealtek RTL8111GN Gigabit Controller
Audio-Realtek ALC 1150-LEET Superior Audio II-Realtek ALC 1150-LEET Superior AudioRealtek 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
Michael Justin Allen Sexton
Michael Justin Allen Sexton is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware US. He covers hardware component news, specializing in CPUs and motherboards.
6 Comments Comment from the forums
  • BugariaM
    Wow, I can not believe my eyes.

    I do not see tons of ridiculous plastic "shield", no strings of LEDs everywhere, and even VRM heatsinks look exactly as they should look like

    My respect for the company ECS
    Reply
  • thundervore
    19100200 said:
    Wow, I can not believe my eyes.

    I do not see tons of ridiculous plastic "shield", no strings of LEDs everywhere, and even VRM heatsinks look exactly as they should look like

    My respect for the company ECS


    That's because they are still playing catchup. Give them time, there will be IO shields and RGB once they see their boards didn't sell as good as the competition.
    Reply
  • joex444
    ECS has been junk since the 90s when they were Elitegroup. Pass.
    Reply
  • greghome
    19100344 said:
    19100200 said:
    Wow, I can not believe my eyes.

    I do not see tons of ridiculous plastic "shield", no strings of LEDs everywhere, and even VRM heatsinks look exactly as they should look like

    My respect for the company ECS


    That's because they are still playing catchup. Give them time, there will be IO shields and RGB once they see their boards didn't sell as good as the competition.

    Over here in the (at least south) eastern half of Asia, the flashy,edgy designs from the likes of MSI are basically considered the things what rednecks would go for...... "Gaming" Look.
    At least they try to go the professional look route, though why an enthusiast would buy ECS baffles me, considering their competition is not that much more expensive.
    Reply
  • Th3pwn3r
    Fry's Electronics used to offer a bundle deal that was a processor and ECS board. The bundle ended up being cheaper than the processor anywhere else. I'm not sure how they were pulling it off but it's not the first time Fry's had a deal like that. Since the board was free I decided to use it and it lasted a very long time before I threw it out, it was actually pretty decent and for basically for free, one of the best boards I have had.
    Reply
  • EpicPlayer
    ECS is still alive?
    Reply