ECS A990FXM-A DELUXE(1.0) AM3+ AMD 990FX SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard

Pros: Power, reset, clear CMOS buttons onboard - plenty of room for expansion. Also a nice LED readout of error codes.

Cons: Board shipped with an older BIOS without support for AMD FX series CPUs - costing me days of waiting and an extra CPU purchase to get the board running - costing this board an egg for headache. So many onboard LEDs make it look like a sideshow gone awry.

Other Thoughts: This board has plenty of potential - but it is hampered by being shipped with an outdated BIOS that can be a major hurdle in building a system with it. What's with all the LEDs?!?

Pros: Only dual NIC board that supports AMD CPUs (why is that?).. 3 PCI-E slots and even one PCI.. USB 3, 6 SATA6 ports, and even an IDE for an old DVD ROM you may not want taking up a SATA port. No BSODs, seems very stable so far.

Cons: BIOS is not that great, and I had problems getting the CPU smart fan to function how I wanted. It would speed up and slow down like crazy at 100% CPU load (on all cores). I even tried their fan speed software. So I just turned that off, run full speed and adjust it myself.

The sys fan power that seems to only supply about 7v no matter if I turn off smart fan or not. I just don't bother using that port. Support took a while to get back with me, but eventually did and was very nice in their response.

Other Thoughts: I bought this for use as my home business server running 2008 Server. I run 6 SATA drives on it and an external SATA 7TB RAID5 box, 16GB RAM. If you're needing dual NIC with AMD, this should do well for you.

Pros: Works great! Dual Lan! Power button built onto the board so if your case button dies you still can power up. Has the best spacing for pciE 1X so my sound card isn't rigth up against my video card which gives more air flow to my fans on the video card. Good support from ECS! I highly recommend this board or any other ecs board. They all seem to put dual lan's on them and i love that since i have two cable modems and can swap over from one network to the other just by enabling one card and disabling the other without having to change cables. Prices are always fair. If you look at other boards they might have a higher price and look nicer to the eye, but are no better than this board right here. Maybe in some devices, but you will pay way more money for it!

Cons: Bios really needs to be fixed. If you look below at ecs's reply on my other reviews you can fix the 32 gig problem with the bios upgrade, but the bios settings don't like to stick. Here is how i got it to stick.

1. Set all your settings the way you want them.
2. Save it as a profile
3. hit save
4. Go back and look your settings will be back to default
5. Go back in and load the profile you saved
6. DO NOT SAVE IT!
7. Just go to the save menu scroll up and go to the EZ bios setup screen and hit boot. Then click your main os hard drive.

That is how i got my bios settings to stick. It is weird that every time you hit save or save and exit your settings go back to default, but those are the steps i took to get it working. Hope that helps anyone t hat gets the board.

Other Thoughts: ECS has been working with me very kindly to help me fix these issues and have been very professional about it. I would just like to ask them to possibly look into fixing the bios so it isn't such a big deal to get bios settings to stick. The Bios that supports 32 gigs is not listed on the mother boards page, but it is hidden on their page here:

http://www.ecs.com.tw/ECSWebSite/Support/Support_FAQ_Detail.aspx?MenuID=75&LanID=9&FAQID=2006031965

Great support from ecs thank goodness because it is the only brand mobo i will buy for myself at least!

Pros: Works great after bios upgrade for 32 gigs of ram working.

Cons: Bios settings will not save. I can set all settings hit save without leaving and go back to my settings they are all back to default. I have tried save and exit and save and reset also. Bios settings will not stick other than time and date.

Other Thoughts: Once i get the bios settings to stick and work will be a great mobo.

Manufacturer Response:

We did update your previous case regarding this. Prior to making any changes in the BIOS, please press the F3 key to load default settings. Then make your necessary changes, save and exit. If you continue to have any issues or have any further questions, please contact us by email or phone.

When contacting us, you can refer to case #ECD12101910003

I or any of my team members here at technical support will be able to help you.
Our hours are Mon-Fri 9am-6pm PST.

Thank you,
Andy
Phone# 1-510-771-0284
Email: andy_K@ecsusa.com

External Link(s):

Elite Member 99-hour service|

Pros: for 32 gigs cheap. I am waiting on new amd AM3+ 8 core processor to get here to tell you if it really works.

Cons: Not sure if it is a con or not, but i read one comment saying they could only get 24 gigs to work it in. I got this memory

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820220695

I hope it works in mine.

Other Thoughts: When my cpu gets here i will post back how it works out. Wish me Luck

Manufacturer Response:

Thank you for purchasing this ECS product. If you have any issues utilizing 32GB of memory, please see the included memory FAQ. If you have any further questions or concerns, please contact us so we can address them.

When contacting us, you can refer to case #ECD12101910003

I or any of my team members here at technical support will be able to help you.
Our hours are Mon-Fri 9am-6pm PST.

Thank you,
Andy
Phone# 1-510-771-0284
Email: andy_K@ecsusa.com

External Link(s):

Memory FAQ|

Elite Member 99-hour service|

Pros: The specs on this board are very appealing, dual gigabit ethernet, 32GB of ram etc.

Cons: The specs do not match what the board is capable of doing when shipped. You will only find this out, after you search through the support site, inevitably give-up and try to contact tech-support, along the way leading you to the FAQ page where (at the bottom) there is a link to download the "service" bios to enable 32GB capability (the max we ever got out of it was 3 sticks totaling 24GB). Now, when we realized the ram wasn't working at full cap, I looked at the two bios updates on the bios page and neither one mentioned ram, nor matched the "special" package in the FAQ. They have ZERO support for updating the bios without an operating system, so we put windows 7 x64 on the machine. We ran the "special" bios program only to have it say it is incompatible with this version, check if your system is 32bit or 64bit (btw it doesn't bother to tell you which one it needs). I then used the eBLU online bios updater. It said it updated the bios but on startup the bios version num didn't change

Other Thoughts: It's a shame this board doesn't work as advertised. The data sheet has everything we wanted to build into our kiosk but now we're going to have to design it out.

Manufacturer Response:

We are sorry to hear about the issues you have experienced with this motherboard. The service BIOS download does include a DOS flash utility, so it is not necessary to install Windows. If you require help updating from DOS we can help. Prior to our response here, we did set up this motherboard with the service BIOS and were able to use 32GB. See the attached picture for reference.

If you haven't contacted, please do so. We would like to find out what memory you are using and work with you to resolve this issue.

When contacting us, you can refer to case #ECD12090710011

I or any of my team members here at technical support will be able to help you.
Our hours are Mon-Fri 9am-6pm PST.

Thank you,
Andy
Phone# 1-510-771-0284
Email: andy_K@ecsusa.com

Related File(s):

32GB

External Link(s):

Elite Member 99-hour service|

Pros: Don't own this mobo, but want more info on it than is provided so I can decide to get or not for my son's build. Even though it's not one of the bigger names out there, ECS has been around for a very long time. Always made affordable hardware.

Cons: No idea...

Other Thoughts: The details of this mobo state that it run crossfire, but makes no mention of it runs SLI or not. I want to run a 3-way SLI set up for this build, but I have no idea if the third PCI 16x slot is 16, 8, or 4. It's not even stated on the ECS site what the specs are. I think this is the same mobo that ECS was selling at the AM3+ socket release for something like $249. There was no way I was paying that for this mobo. With the right specs $169 can be done. If the people at Newegg could also find and list these specs too that would be helpful.

Manufacturer Response:

For your reference, this motherboard can support 3 way SLI. One video card will run at 16. Two video cards will run at 16x16. Three video cards will run at 16x8x8.

If you have any questions regarding this or any of our other products we can be reached at the email or number below.

When contacting us, you can refer to case #ECD12091210002

I or any of my team members here at technical support will be able to help you.
Our hours are Mon-Fri 9am-6pm PST.

Thank you,
Andy
Phone# 1-510-771-0284
Email: andy_K@ecsusa.com

External Link(s):

Elite Member 99-hour service|