Power Consumption

I have to say, the power consumption numbers are very impressive, undercutting all the boards we've already seen in both idle and load power usage. It's even more noteworthy because of the complete lack of power management for the CPU power phases. Well done, ECS.

Value and Conclusion

At £68 the ECS board is comparable to the other Asus, Gigabyte and MSI 785G boards on the UK market: most sell from around £55-£75 depending on what features you're after. The ECS A785GM-M has a good set of basic features, but it does little to differentiate itself in a packed marketplace. For every two digit LED POST readout, nicely featured Rear I/O or exceptionally low power consumption, there's an equally important BIOS redundancy, poor heatsink retention, core unlocking and a fuller featured BIOS (including profile saving) that's lacking.

We have to admit the performance is better than we expected, and despite the odd test flop, it's generally very good. However, we're still aware most other companies continually push forward, we still find ECS lagging behind in certain key areas. The A785GM-M is a good product that should certainly suffice for a basic PC build, but it doesn't really do enough to inspire us to recommend it as a must buy.

• Performance
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• 8/10

• Features
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• -
• -
• 6/10

• Value
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• -
• 7/10

• Overall
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• -
• 7/10

Score Guide