ECS G33T-M2 Micro-ATX Motherboard Review

Final Thoughts And Conclusion

Well, there you have it, the G33T-M2 motherboard from ECS. This board is a decent board if you are looking to find something to build that HTPC or budget (we assume) box.

The layout of the board is just fine. One gripe and one fatal flaw do stand out though. The 4-pin 12v connector should have been placed higher, towards the top edge of the board. This certainly shold be a standard on all boards, as it makes for easier wire management. The fatal flaw in my opinion is the lack of an IDE connector. I really am still dumb-founded as to why ECS would have left that off a board. The majority of people are still using at least IDE optical drives, and many are using large IDE hard drives for storage. With the lack of an IDE connector, the end user will be forced to purchase (if they do not already have one) and external optical or Hard drive for what is still condsidered to be normal use.

The performance of the board is great. The G33 chipset brings no big performance gains, but it is as good of a performer at default settings as anything else we have looked at in recent days. The bundle for the board is pretty much non-existant, but at least it comeswith the bare necessities.

Overclocking on the board was decent for what is available. The lack of any vcore and multiplier adjustments really hurts that area of this board. But the overclock we did get was fairly good for our limitations, and would be a nice little boost for what this board will be used for.

The pricing for this board really is hard to find at the moment. None of the big “e-tailers” are carrying the board as of yet. What little pricing we could find puts that board at between $100-115, which is in line with some of the other G33 boards that are online. As a side note, it looks as if some of the other offerings of this chipset DO include an IDE connector on the board.

Legit Bottom Line: The ECS G33T-M2 motherboard proved to be a stable platform to build a system around and had solid performance numbers to go along with the stability. If you don’t need any PATA drives then this Micro-ATX motherboard should fit the bill!