ECS 755-A2

The ECS 755-A2 is a no frills budget offering, with an SiS 755 chipset. It has basic onboard sound, 100Mb networking, two SATA connectors, and little else.

This board replaces the 755-A, which we used for our original testing. It was unable to run memory above 333MHz, despite the chipset supporting it. This newer version is the same price and has no problem with DDR400. The board is well laid out, not that this is hard to do when there are so few components and connectors. Both ATX connectors avoid crossing the CPU area and the RAM slots are located right at the top of the board, eliminating possibility of the graphics card getting in the way. The graphics card retention clip is the lever type, which is very difficult to release if you don't have any fingernails.

The manual is short, but clear and concise. The board comes with an SATA cable, an IDE cable, an FDD cable and nothing else. If you want to make use of the extra USB headers on the board, or the SPDIF out header, you must find your own cables.

The 755-A2 is currently hard to find, but can be bought directly from their UK Distributer, Protac at £57.58. This edges in at the cheapest board in the round up, and rightly so. For an extra pound, the EQS boards offers Firewire, 6 Channel audio and a much better software bundle.

With no voltage settings, the extra 32MHz of overclocking will not get you far, but may squeeze a little more out of your CPU. This is the sort of board you would put in budget workstation and would pair nicely with a suitably cheap AMD Sempron. Novatech.co.uk are currently selling a nice upgrade bundle for £311.38 inclusive of VAT, which includes 512Mb of DDR400, an AMD 3200+ and the 755-A. This would make an excellent upgrade option for anyone with an aging system.

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