Motherboards are still a good part of any system, as they can allow you to put many different components into your system.  Choosing the right motherboard is more important than many other components in your computer system.

    Intel has a fairly large stable of chipsets for their socket 775 processors.  These can range all the way from the older 865 series of chipsets to the newer 925XE chipsets.  Most Intel motherboards are now based on the 9XX series of chipsets these days, which allows for use of DDR2 and PCIe cards.

    ECS isn't really a name that comes to your mind when you think of high quality motherboards that are designed for overclockers.  They are well known as an OEM for many white box systems and as a low cost motherboard manufacturer for integrated motherboards.

ECS 915P-A

    ECS sent us their 915P based motherboard with quite a few interesting pieces to it.  While we will take a look at most of the specifications during our review, for a link to their site please follow this link.  Lets take a look at some pictures of this motherboard.

• Motherboard
• Manual
• SATA cable
• SATA power cable
• IDE and Floppy cables
• Driver CD
• Motherboard back plate

    Lets take a look at the layout of this motherboard.  It has a layout of 1 * PCIe x16 slot, 2 * PCIe x1 slots, 1 AGPExpress slot, and 2 PCI slots, for a truly varied card options.  This gives a indication of the design theory behind this motherboard as it offers both an x16 and "AGP" slot.  The bundle included with the motherboard is fairly basic, with the driver CD that includes as a highlight, PC-Cillin.  Otherwise all the standard cables are included for connection IDE devices.

    The backplate of this motherboard houses a fairly standard array of connections.  We have the PS/2 connectors, the parallel and serial connector, 4 USB ports, the NIC connection,  and the standard sound block for most Intel HD motherboards.

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