What else can you expect? ECS A785GM-M5 is the only choice you can make if you’re really on a budget but yet still get quality chipset from AMD.
ECS is actually a mainboard manufacturer more as an OEM brand. They make boards for different companies just like how foxconn makes chips for apple and dell. However, foxconn don’t brand their own motherboard. ECS does. Today, we have the A785GM-M5 from ECS, and let us take a look at what really makes this board worthwhile to buy.
Firstly, it uses an AMD 785g chipset. That means you’re good to go without a discrete graphics card. Integrated 4250 ain’t that powerful compared to a beefy 4850, but can certainly meet the expectations of your normal video playback, youtube video watching, word processing, powerpoint creation and things like that. A certain must go if you’re planning to build a home theatre PC. The competitor chipset from Intel, the corei3 and corei5 with integrated graphics on the processor core itself is too expensive. I’ll still stick to the 785g chipset no matter what. Add on an athlon ii x4 for superior price to performance ratio. You’re good to go.
Next, is the pricing. If you plan to use this as an home theatre pc, there is no need for a very high end system. This motherboard is the cheapest on the list of all the motherboards available on the market(as of the date I bought the motherboard). Besides, you need to think about the components that fits into the motherboard as well. DDR2 Dimm slots compared to the newer DDR3 are preferred because they are cheaper.
With an inclusion of a pci-e x16 certainly allows you to upgrade your graphics solution in the future if there is a need. Besides, hybrid crossfire is enabled on this motherboard. Just add on a compatible graphics card to the pci-e x16 slot to have a gpu performance level up with both the integrated graphics chip as well as your discrete graphics chip. It saves a lot more electricity as well(because of the technology of hybrid crossfire).
This whole motherboard is a very simple and micro atx which is certainly a board worth considering when building your hometheatre pc.
