14 DAY TRIAL // To serve existing AMD Apus, and in anticipation of those yet to come, motherboard makers have been promoting F1 motherboards, and it looks like ECS decided to offer some A55 platforms.
Since Advanced Micro Devices has been so proactive in its efforts to get its Fusion chips to as many users as possible, motherboard makers have, understandably, been doing the same for their own products.
FM1 mainboards have, thus, been coming out quite regularly, with A75-based models taking center stage, more or less.
In this particular case, however, ECS decided to cater to the needs of users form the mainstream segment.
As such, instead of the A75, it put the A55 chipset to work in the A55F-A, A55F-M2 and A55F-M3, all of them intended to hold an A-Series APU (accelerated processing unit).
For those that need to refresh their memory, accelerated processing units are, essentially, CPUs with built-in Radeon HD 6000 graphics.
The three aforementioned ECS boards feature the micro-ATX form factor (the A55F-A is a full ATX product) and, just in case the integrated graphics are not enough, they have 1 PCI Express slot.
For endurance and stability, ECS used solid capacitors around the CPU area, bringing about a longer lifespan as well.
Furthermore, the company threw in two DDR3 memory slots (four on the ATX) and distinct I/O, connectivity and storage port layouts.
Besides SATA 6.0 Gbps (up to six ports), one will find Gigabit Ethernet and one to three display outputs (DVI, D-Sub and/or HDMI). The one feature that the newcomers do lack is support for the SuperSpeed USB 3.0 technology.
The ECS A55F line seems mostly geared towards entertainment PCs, though gaming capabilities can still be attained with the right parts. After all, Dual Graphics (swaps between integrated and discrete graphics) and overclocking capabilities are both present and accounted for.
