This is the question many of us end up asking ourselves when we are looking to upgrade our system.  We want the best board we can find, one that will adequately utilize all of our expensive hardware, without making us take out a second mortgage.  Ok, so maybe I went a bit overboard there.  I’ve never heard of anyone taking out another mortgage on their home to upgrade their computer, but you get the idea.  Not everyone is able to spend $5,000 building the computer of our dreams.

For those of us who fit into this category, we demand value!  We want to make sure that when we complete our new build, it will boot up on the first try, without having to spend hours trying figure out where something went wrong.  We want performance without having to sacrifice stability.  And, we want it at a price we can afford.  Yes, we want our cake, and we want to eat it too.  There are many things in life where we are not able to accomplish this, but we may have found a way to do just that.

Enter the Elitegroup Computer Systems, with their A780GM-A Ultra Black Series motherboard.  Coming in at $75 USD, this board is much more affordable than some of the $300+ boards we have seen around the marketplace lately. But can this board stand up against its higher priced competition?  I don’t want to spoil the answer for you right here at the beginning, so let’s explore this board and see if it can truly hold its own in this ever-evolving field.

Our thanks go to ECS for supplying us with the review sample. 

ECS, the Elitegroup Computer Systems, has been a pioneer in designing and manufacturing computer motherboards since 1987. With its 21 years of experience in designing and manufacturing motherboards, the building block of many of today's personal computers, ECS is expected to remain as one of the major contributors in the IT industry. The company is very fortunate to work very closely with many major chip designers in the PC industry on the design, development and manufacture of future IT innovations. Together with its business partners and its team members around the world, ECS is ready to provide a rich variety of new products and great services to its customers in the years to come.