ECS Z87H3-A2X Extreme
Board Layout:
The layout of the ECS Z87H3-A2X Extreme isn't very unconventional but it is aesthetically pleasing if installing it within a chassis having a side panel window. The PCB for this ATX motherboard is black and the heatsink covering the Z87 chipset is red along with heatsinks on the CPU power circuitry, which is connected to the Z87 heatsink via a heatpipe routed around the LGA-1150 CPU socket area. The capacitors on the motherboard are also gold colored while the DIMM and PCI Express slots are black.
There are four DDR3 memory slots on this motherboard that support up to DDR3-1600MHz frequencies or even higher frequencies at overclocked frequencies. Below the four DDR3 DIMM slots and next to the Intel Z87 chipset are seven Serial ATA ports. Six of these SATA ports are rotated 90 degrees and positioned along the edge of the PCB for easy connectivity. Going lower on the motherboard is a EZ LED debug display indicator. This motherboard also has physical buttons on the PCB for power on, reset, plus EZ Enter BIOS, EZ Clear CMOS, BIOS ROM Backup, and EZ Click OC support.
The expansion slots on the Z87H3-A2X Extreme include three PCI Express 3.0 x16, one PCI Express x1, and one PCI slot. With the Intel Haswell chipsets ditching PCI support, the PCI slot on this ECS motherboard is provided by an ITE bridge chip. If installing multiple PCI-E x16 devices (graphics cards), the bandwidth is sadly limited to PCI-E x8 transfer speeds. This motherboard is fully compatible with AMD CrossFire and NVIDIA SLI support. There is enough spacing between the PCI Express x16 slots that multiple dual-slot graphics cards shouldn't have any accommodation issues.
Underneath the heatsink near the LGA-1150 CPU socket area is a 12-phase power VRM. This heatsink is far enough from the CPU area that it shouldn't cause any issues for most after-market CPU heatsinks. The heatpipe connecting this new ECS heatsink to the Z87 heatsink is also low profile enough not to obstruct any heatsink installation.
The rear panel I/O ports on this motherboard include the usual audio connections plus S/PDIF, two Gigabit Ethernet ports, one HDMI port, one DisplayPort, the WiFi connector for use with the included antenna, Bluetooth dongle, two eSATA 6Gb/s, four USB 3.0, and four USB 2.0 ports. There's also an easy access clear CMOS button. While there's HDMI and DisplayPort if using the integrated Intel Haswell HD Graphics, there sadly isn't any dual-link DVI port, which may be a problem for some users but there's always HDMI/DP adapters that can be purchased separately.
Important ASICs on this ECS Haswell motherboard include an ASM1061 SATA controller, PCI ITE bridge, IT8732 Super I/O, Realtek ALC1150+ALC5505 HD audio codec, and Realtek 8111G Ethernet.