Final thoughts, HEXUS.awards and HEXUS.right2reply
Final thoughts, awards, and right2reply
Extreme performance enthusiasts will have wandered off some time ago now. So we reckon that leaves us with those on a budget, those looking at uATX boards and those who just like to read what we write.
So, to whom it concerns, will the ECS RS482-M do the job? Well, if that job is get you a Socket 939 motherboard for less than fifty quid, yes, it will. If that job is sit in a media centre, then its onboard graphics should be fine unless you're interested in HDTV. The board will take up to an FX-60! CPU, though it's unlikely anyone on a budget would be buying such a processor right now. That said, drop a reasonably powerful Athlon 64 into the board, maybe even a cheap dual-core one, along with a reasonable amount of DDR400 RAM, and it'll crunch away encoding those TV streams and playing back the DivXs without much trouble.
There's nothing on this board that makes you go 'wow', but there are a few nice features, like the TV-Out bracket and, for the most part, a good board layout. The bundle as a whole is perhaps a little stingy. We'd love an extra SATA cable in the package, please, ECS. The integrated graphics is only useful if you don't want to game with newer titles, but the PEG slots gives opportunity for a potentially hefty upgrade in that department, should the user so wish.
We weren't keen on the southbridge's hideous USB storage performance, so do bear this in mind if it's going to be an issue for you; it won't be for everyone. We could moan about the limited BIOS features too, but nobody's trying to say this is an enthusiast board, so we won't.
All things considered, the ECS RS482-M would serve the budget buyer well. Its support for Socket 939 and PCIe graphics leave room for what is, when you think about it, quite a lot of upgradeability. You could start on integrated graphics and a cheap-o CPU and work your way up to something dual core with some sportier graphics. We like the sound of that. It's small, pretty well-designed, upgradeable and cheap (under £40), so it walks away with our value award.
HEXUS Awards
