ECS A970M-A DELUXE v1.0 AM3+ AMD 970 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 AMD Motherboard

Pros: Beautiful aesthetic, solidly built, great price, FX-4100 was easy to OC to 4.1GHz

Cons: Could not get the BIOS to consistently maintain my settings, BIOS would throttle CPU even after turning every power monitoring/controlling function off in the BIOS....and something strange - it would not work with any AMD graphics card! Originally I was using a GTX 560Ti - and everything was fine. I decided to upgrade to a HD 7870 - the card wouldn't work. I tried everything - installing/uninstalling drivers etc - even swapped the HDD for a new one with fresh Windows 7 install - no luck. I tried MANY other cards - even had a friend bring over a few cards - EVERY NVIDIA CARD WORKED! Simply plug&play! NONE OF THE AMD CARDS WORKED! When you install an AMD card in ANY of the PCIe slots - turn on the system - all fans and lights, but no picture - nothing - no beeps.

Other Thoughts: I gave 3 eggs because I have high hopes for this board and look forward to it working when it comes back from RMA! I also deducted 2 eggs because ECS customer service was mediocre at best. Example - I detailed my issue and informed them I had tried everything including updating the BIOS. They sent me a reply that said try updating the BIOS....? (Do they even read the emails)? In regards to NONE of the AMD cards working, I received a reply to the effect of: We have tested the motherboard we have here and there seems to be no issue with AMD graphics cards....? Umm, that's good - so send me THAT board in exchange for the one I have because MY BOARD WONT ALLOW USE OF AMD GRAPHICS CARDS! I mean did they really think that there might be a company-wide problem with their motherboards and AMD graphics cards? Of course your board works - now will you send me one that does! Please!

Manufacturer Response:

We are sorry to hear about the issues you have experienced so far. We sincerely apologize for any miscommunication that you may have encountered and will look into your concerns. There really shouldn't be anything hardware wise on the motherboard that would stop a specific chipset (AMD) video card from displaying video wihile allowing another to work correctly. Your case has been forwarded to the RMA department and an RMA number was issued on Thursday 4/25/2013. If you have any concerns regarding your RMA, please contact s and we help ensure that everything is proceeding as it should.

When contacting us, you can refer to case #ECW13042010001

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# 1-510-456-9836
Email: andy_K@ecsusa.com

External Link(s):

Elite Member 99-hour service|

Pros: Gave this board 2 eggs because it my be a good board if you get a good one .

Cons: Board ran fine for 3 months , first two memory slots quit working, didnt OC it but one time and that was a wrong click of the mouse in bios. Never say Never but could be last ECS Board for me!

Other Thoughts: Newegg should offer those plastic standoffs for these newer small boards, I use one or two on every build just snip the threads off, works fine no cracked boards.

Manufacturer Response:

We are sorry to hear about the memory issue you are experiencing. If you haven't already, please contact us as we would like to find out more details to your configuration and issue. After which we would like to work with you in finding a solution. If you feel you need RMA, we can help with that or you can register your motherboard and apply for our 99-hour replacement service.

When contacting us, you can refer to case #ECD13042610006

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# 1-510-456-9836
Email: andy_K@ecsusa.com

External Link(s):

Elite Member 99-hour service|

Pros: layout, 7.1 channel audio with toslink, a all black pcb, the gold theme is eyecatching, the click bios is easy to use don't know what the other reviewers are up to,

Cons: the ads seems to me a gimmick since the northbridge temps are much higher than one on my other computer,

Other Thoughts: when will amd motherboards have pcie 3.0 slots

Pros: has USB 3.0? amd two video card slots? well havent seen them work yet so the benefit of the doubt goes to the board for that because i have nothing good say other than it has not died yet.....

this review is an update with info for those who already have the board, for all others get an Asus..... or Gigabyte or anything .....

Cons: ECS reps will give you the usual flow chart response that will not solve anything or they have excuses to why they cant respond or do anything about your problems, OHHHH and there is no bios update for any of you who had problems . SORRY! still no update....

bios changes prompt a no post! wow..... but more than two sticks of ram in?... .no post! i bet two video cards would do that too, so i wont wast my time

the bios are horrible look no further than any review here, you can not shut off cores, you need to to to avoid throttling! too bad!

the socket to the processor seems to get hot well before the processor itself reaches its mid temps. the result is throttling. I had to use a fan on the water block that could reach the processor socket to cool it or make the sensors read normal.

the 1st and 3rd ram sockets do not work and i saw this in two boards! mine as well have made this a two socket board.

Ecs wanted people to get this instead of a bargain board, those are actually better and more durable. so that is really sad

Other Thoughts: seeing peoples boards with similiar problems just makes me more angry... I thought my board was a bad one and it was isolated, nope...

a bad batch? not it was a bad board design entirely. just something is wrong with it and QC was blind or had a day off... who knows

is it "out of stock"? or done away with??

Manufacturer Response:

We apologize for the issue you have experienced with your motherboard. Please do contact us. We would like to work with you in resolving this issue, if possible, by making a special arrangement with you.

When contacting us, you can refer to case #ECD13041510010

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# 1-510-456-9836
Email: andy_K@ecsusa.com

External Link(s):

Elite Member 99-hour service|

Pros: It looks nice, and has nice hardware features.

Cons: Terrible Bios. By far, Hands down, THE WORST BIOS I have ever laid eyes on.

It over heats my AMD 965 the second you try to play any game ON THE LOWEST SETTINGS, so it drops the cpu speed to 800MHZ. I have cool and quiet turned off, I have all the fans at their highest speeds, I have my Tower CPU heatsink in a pushpull configuration WITH a PWM fan set to the highest speed.

The voltage controls are terrible, their not specific enough, and even when you do set a voltage, once you get into windows, it fluctuates dramatically.

even trying to set the FSB speed and CPU speed doesn't work because once your in windows, it changed them anyways.

I tried updating the Bios, trying Both the ROM and the CAP versions of it, and no change. Im monitoring everything with CPUZ and SpeedFan.

Other Thoughts: AMD phenom X4 965BE
16Gb Geil ram
Nvidia GTX 650
Corsair CX430M
250Gb WD Raptor
3x 120mm case fans - 2x 80mm in push-pull on a full copper tower CPU cooler.

Manufacturer Response:

We are sorry to hear about the issues you are experiencing and apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you. Our engineers are currently working with AMD. If you haven't already please contact us and we will update you as soon as we have an answer.

When contacting us, you can refer to case #ECE13041210005

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# 1-510-456-9836
Email: andy_K@ecsusa.com

External Link(s):

Elite Member 99-hour service|

Pros: full of features, stable and well built.

Cons: apart from theese dust shields one of which interfere with a third party cooler, i cannot see one

Other Thoughts: I have two of theese boards one with phenom II x4 965be cpu and one with fx 4100 cpu , both with GeForce gtx 660
and there is no such thing happening. Disable C&Q in bios and use a high performance power sheme. sheer

Pros: none

Cons: This board even with amd cool and q.. turned off would throttle my cpu down... This was in the middle of game play which was stressing the cpu... Which you should know is the exact opposite of what cool and q... is suppose to do... I installed the cpu back in the old board and the problem was fixed... So yes it is the board. I noticed the board is discontinued... Think this board had about a 6 month life span on newegg.. and for the obvious reason.. It is JUNK...

Other Thoughts: Seems like alot of the cheaper motherboards with the new gui bios are missing alot of features or are really buggy.... since chipset changes are basically at a stand still you would think these mobo manufactures wouldnt have a hard time providing something functional... Seems they are getting lazy!!

Pros: To the poster below...
The board is not throttling your 965 BE back, thats your 965 BE doing it. The feature is called Cool & Quiet, if you want it to stop throttling down to 800mhz then you need to disable it. this is not the motherboards fault...

Cons: Needs BIOS updates something fierce. :/

Other Thoughts: A customer of mine purchased this board and thought it was bad so called me to troubleshoot it. The board was fine but worked infinitely better after updating to the newest BIOS.

Not such a bad board, I do not know why everyone is rating it badly. I have used ECS boards since the K7S5A with ModdedHoneyX BIOS and have used countless ECS since then. I would put these reviews under more scrutiny... Something here seems amiss.

Pros: 970 chipset, price

Cons: Constantly throttled my stock speed 965 BE CPU down to 798MHz every couple of minutes even though the temperature never exceeded 58C. ECS was unable to provide any answers so I did what I should have done first and purchased an Asus board.

Manufacturer Response:

We apologize for the inconvenience this has caused you. We realize that you have changed your motherboard to another but if you have any questions or concerns with the ECS product, please contact us. Your feed back is always welcome.

When contacting us, you can refer to case #ECP13030810006

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# 1-510-456-9836
Email: andy_K@ecsusa.com

External Link(s):

Elite Member 99-hour service|

Pros: It ran very well with my 125W TDP FX-8120 CPU. I had no problems with system instability after running various stress-testing programs. It is a nice looking board, with lots of features for the price point.

Cons: The DIMM slots seem to be labeled backwards. When I had my DIMMS in the first slots indicated by the manual, the board would not post, once I swapped them to others it was fine.
Also, there is no onboard VGA. I was using a video card anyway, but it's always a nice feature for troubleshooting.
The bigger problem was that after a couple of days the computer totally died. It was giving one long beep, then 8 short beeps. The manual said this indicates that it's not detected a VGA signal. So, I moved the video card to the second PCI-Express slot, and it detected the video card correctly and POST'd just fine. I swapped it back to the original slot to double check, and it failed to detect the card again, so somehow that slot is just dead. The computer would also not boot into windows, it would freeze on the splash screen. So apparently there were additional problems beyond the video slot.

Other Thoughts: I received this board as an upgrade replacement for an A960M-M3 that had horrible system instability problems. I paid the difference in price, and was very happy that this board appeared to be working for me, until it crashed and died. I've been involved in an extended RMA process with this company since early December. Up until this point it was always design limitations and never seemed to be a problem with the board quality itself. To have this board fail with an apparent quality control problem like this is very frustrating.

Manufacturer Response:

We sincerely apologize for the issues you have experienced. We have emailed you with some trouble shooting steps and a BIOS update to try. If these suggestions do not resolve your issues, please contact us.

When contacting us, you can refer to case #ECD13010410015

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# 1-510-456-9836
Email: andy_K@ecsusa.com