ECS GF8200A Motherboard Review – GeForce 8200

Board Layout

Hmmm… wonder why this is part of the black series? Obviously, it is because of the black PCB that ECS has used. Black has actually always been my favorite color of PCB. Just looks cooler! I know, worthless opinion, but it is mine. There are quite a few colors of plastic used for slots on the board, but they are not too ugly or distracting. Lets dive in for a closer look!

Top right is the location of the dimm slots. The board supports up to 32GB of DDR2 ram at speeds of DDR2 1066/800/667/533/400. You also see the 24-pin power connector here at the edge of the board. Great location! Next to it is the single IDE connector that is on the board powered by the GeForce 8200 Chipset.

We find a lot of goodies at the bottom right of the board. First off, we have fice SATA2 connectors that are powered by the GeForce 8200 Chipset, which supports RAID 0, 1, 0+1, and 5 configurations.

Next to the SATA connectors is the heatsink that covers the chipset. Is seemed to do an adequate job of cooling, as we had no issues with heat on the board at all. Take a closer look at the heatsink.

Under the SATA ports we find two of my most favorite things in the world… well, ok, maybe not in the world, but certainly one of the things I like to see on a board. Power and reset buttons!

BIOS chip!

Our PCI/PCI-E slots included on the board are: one x16 PCI-E slot that supports Hybrid SLI, two PCI-E x1 slots, and three legacy PCI slots.

Audio is powered by the IDT 92HD206 which supports 8-channel hi-def sound.

Top left is our CPU socket location. We also have our 4-pin 12v power connector which is located at the boards edge.

The back I/O panel includes: PS/2 mouse and keyboard connectors, your line in and line out audio ports, your onboard VGA port, an ethernet port, n eSATA port, six USB ports and one HDMI port.

That is all the interesting things on this board. Lets move on!