ECS A790GXM mainboard review - 4 - Meet the A790GXM-A mainboard (1)

Photo gallery - The Mainboard

On the next few pages we'll show you some photos. The images were taken at 4272 x 2848 pixels and then scaled down. The camera used was a Canon 450D - 12 MegaPixel.

The bundle and packaging. ECS makes sure you'll receive everything you need to get started. Not a rather excessive bundle though. this is common for ECS. I'm Dutch, I like to see lot's of items included ;)

This ECS mainboard comes with 2 PCI, 2 PCIe x16 (either 1 x PCIe x16 or 2 x PCIe x 8 for CrossFireX) 2 PCIe x1 slots. The board incorporates 2x Realtek Ethernet (RTL 8111C) and Realtek ALC 888S 8-channel HD audio. First impression, pretty decent design. Everything is located nicely. Good color-coding.

I love the fact to see two Gigabit Ethernet jacks and the support for 8-channel sound. There's plenty more to be found on the board though.

A passive copper cooler sits on ECS Elitegroup A790GXM-A north-bridge and black heatspreaders on its power circuitry (MOSFETS). Also located there is a 128 MB memory module of DDR3-1333 memory. This is actually side-port cache used to improve integrated graphics performance.

The mainboards back panel shows off standard PS/2 ports, VGA and HDMI, unfortunately its lacking a DVI output.

Then a serial port, a luxurious six USB 2.0 ports, 2x Gigabit Ethernet, and then jacks for 8.1-channel connectivity. Very respectable ..  an optical connector TOSLINK is there as well. I see a virtue of HTPC option on this board. I mean you got everything from 2D/3D, Ethernet, and sounds all integrated into one mainboard.

Insert a Phenom and some memory ..and your almost there, not to mention the silent passive design. I love that.