ECS A85F2-A Golden Board (A85X) Motherboard Review

The last time we took a look at an ECS Golden board, we commented that it had the Marmite effect, where some will love it and others will truly despise it and I was always a bit on the fence, as it’s not exactly my first choice when thinking colour schemes and ECS have decided to style this board under the same banner but with this FM2 board, it works a bit better as it’s not completely over the top as the Z77 board was. The styling isn’t exactly subtle when it comes to the golden heatsinks, but it’s not completely in your face which is a little less annoying to say the least. The styling has definitely improved and the overall design is getting better, but to me it still feels a bit like its a gimmick but I’m from the UK and we go through phases, and if this board was released around 10 years ago, it would have been a big hit, just after the Burberry  patterned graphics cards. Oh wait, that didn’t happen, did it? Either way, the board does have its market, and I know for a fact that Asia and other subcontinent locations do push to get this type of product, but in the western world, I can’t see it working that well.

Performance wise, we saw some ups and downs and this board performed in line with where we expected, sometimes pushing ahead of the competition, while other tests showed it taking a bit of a back seat. It overclocked fairly well and gave us some nice boosts in performance too and with a more mature BIOS, I feel that this board could be pushed a bit further, both in terms of stock and overclocked performance, and hopefully we’ll see ECS working hard to bring more frequent BIOS updates to the table, as this is why some of their rival brands do so well in the market, so maybe ECS can learn a trick here?

With a more mature BIOS we could possibly see the overclock improving to the levels we’ve seen using other boards, such as 4.5 and 4.6GHz which shouldn’t be too hard to do as with extra voltage it’s currently possible on this board, but under a safe guided AMD limit, 4.4GHz really did seem to be knocking on the upper ceiling of the voltage range.

Currently not on sale in the UK, but based on the Z77 board we had, you’d expect it to be quite expensive as before, but if we step over the pond to the US, we see it retailing around the $125 mark, which shows fairly good value for what’s on offer and allows it to compete with boards from the likes of ASRock, Asus, Gigabyte and MSI.

Pricing, performance and styling aside, it still offers something different to the marketplace  and ultimately to the end user. Also having friends in Egypt, the Philippines and Taiwan, I know for a fact that they are waiting for local retailers to stock it, but for me in the UK, I’d have to give it a miss based on style alone, but as an overall package, it’s definitely a board worth considering.