ECS H110S-2P Review

Performance Analysis

We'll start with perhaps the most important result: the M.2 port. It's clear that you'll be seeing a huge drop in the read speed of a Samsung 950 Pro due to the lack of bandwidth. We saw just 1,600MB/sec compared to 2,300MB/sec, which we've seen from most Z170 and X99 boards. However, these are clearly much faster than a SATA 6Gbps SSD so there are some gains to be had if you're keen to get the fastest SSD possible. There are other options too, namely Intel's 600p series (1,600MB/sec read, 540MB/sec write), which is available for less than £100 for 256GB, or Plextor's M6e, which is rated at 770MB/sec read and 580MB/sec write, which costs around £10 less for 256GB. Alternatively, you could ditch the M.2 port entirely and just go for a large SATA 6Gbps SSD.


Performance from the Core i7-6700 was good, although the higher base and Turbo frequencies of the Core i7-6700K did result in some noticeably faster results in all tests. Another interesting point is that the Core-i7-6700HQ - usually found in laptops but more recently Intel's Skull Canyon NUC - is snapping at its heels in some tests. However, even given the Core i7-6700 costs close to £300/$320, factoring in the board cost, mini-STX still works out much cheaper than the current £550/$580 price of the Skull Canyon NUC.

Something we didn't graph are the power consumption numbers, for the simple reason the platform is entirely different to our other test gear and everything will depend on the CPU you opt for - we'd imagine the Core i7-6700 might be a rare choice too, but an idle draw of 35W and load at 110W puts it on an almost even keel with a Core i7-6700K, which drew a couple more watts under load.

Conclusion

Despite repeated back and forth with ECS, we have not been able to nail down a UK MSRP nor find any retailer that currently stocks this motherboard - apparently Newegg will be your best bet, however. The US MSRP of $80 means we're expecting this to cost around £80 on these shores, but with the market as it is for now we really just don't know. Nonetheless, the board performed well, albeit with a rather limited EFI and software feature set, which will undoubtedly be better on offerings from Asus and ASRock. The size of the form factor does limit what it's capable of, and ECS has done a decent enough job for a recommendation but it's worth exploring other options, and good luck finding it for sale.

Thankfully, the manufacturers that have so far joined the mini-STX club haven't seen fit to charge sky-high prices for these dinky motherboards and while one or two ready-made systems may demand a hefty premium, building your own mini-STX system is actually very affordable. All the components you need, albeit with a slim choice of cases (these are mostly fairly cheap though), are available off-the-shelf, and with the boards retailing for around £80, there's plenty of scope for building a capable system, albeit with limited gaming potential, for a lot less than Intel is charging for its Skull Canyon NUC.