ECS Elitegroup Z77H2-AX Golden Board (Z77) Motherboard Review

I wanted this board to be good, I really did, but I find myself slightly dissapointed with the way things went, and that’s mainly down to the performance side of things.

ECS aren’t the most well know, at least in my homeland, but that doesn’t mean their products are bad. In fact I’ve used ECS products in the past that have blown other brands products out of the water, but I feel that the true essence behind that has slightly vanished, and that’s a real shame. I feel that to much time has been focussed on the aesthetics and not the fundamentals of a board, with the BIOS, performance and overclockability.

I’ve made it clear about the styling, that it looks as though Flava Flav has got his hands on it and given it the all-star gold treatment, and while this is gimmicky, a lot of consumers are going to eat it up and think it’s the best thing since sliced bread. Feature wise, the board does include some interesting aspects, such as the mSATA connector and the amount and variety of expansion slots. It also has Bluetooth and WiFi which only a handful of boards in this day and age actually include, straight out of the box. So to say that this board is lacking is a completely false statement as it offers more in terms of bundle and features than most of our boards we tested, put together.

In terms of performance, this was a bit hit and miss, as for the most part, this board ended up at the bottom of the stack, but when it comes to gaming orientated tests, we saw some clear increases over other boards, with Metro suddenly finding another 6FPS. For the true gamers out there, we know how important every last frame can be, and this board somehow manages to find it for you.

The BIOS, being brutally honest, is probably the worst part of this board, and that’s not down to the design, but just the whole mix. The fact that it’s a UEFI based GUI BIOS with no screenshot button, which sure is a luxury, but I want my button. It also had issues with a few mice of ours where increasing the DPI on the mouse simply did nothing and was forced to lag across the screen. The EZ mode in my opinion should just be completely scrapped as it doesn’t offer anything, even basic features, but the worst part of the BIOS has to be the overclocking functions, as simply put; they lie.

Increasing voltages has never been such a scary thing, since using this board. As explained earlier, it can lead to a whole heap of trouble, especially for the average consumer, who may just want to dabble a bit. There is no colour differentiation to show when you are going a bit to “extreme” and the fact that the onboard BIOS monitoring system for voltages gives completely false readings compared to CPU-Z and the voltage monitoring points on the board, which both happened to match up.

Overclockability is present, and falls in-line with most of the boards we test, due to our lousy clocking i7 3770k, but the options to push things further, just don’t seem to be there, or if they are; they are found in completely the wrong place.

Also priced in at $319.99, it’s the most expensive Z77 board on the market and honestly we can’t see many people buying it.

This conclusion may sound like a bit of a rant, and for the most part it is, but we strive on being honest and truthful with our reviews, and don’t believe that sugarcoating a bad product should be done, but on the same hand; I’m not saying this is a bad product as the problems highlighted can be fixed with an updated BIOS, once ECS read this and hopefully feed it back to their BIOS team.

With the BIOS aside, the board does offer great gaming performance, a great bundle with a unique look that some may see as horrid, and some may love it, but for us; it’s innovation and that’s why we’re giving it our Innovation Award. Unless you can find me another board from another brand that can be daring enough to make a board that has more gold in it than Lil Wayne’s mouth, then this award will stay.