14 DAY TRIAL // ECS has showcased a wide number of motherboards at this year's Computex fair and one of the most impressive models to make its appearance is the Black Extreme A990FXM-A AM3+ board for AMD Bulldozer processors.
Just as its name implies, the A990FXM-A is built using AMD's most powerful chipset in the 900-series range, the 990FX, which can support up to 40 PCI Express lanes as well as 3-way CrossFireX and Nvidia SLI setups.
ECS has routed these to three x16 PCI Express slots, which are properly spaced to house dual-GPU graphics cards, and has also paired them with two PCI Express x1 slots and with a legacy 32-bit PCI slot.
Right beneath these stands the SB950 south bridge, which is used to control the six SATA 6Gbps ports that are available on the board.
An additional IDE port can be used for connecting two other storage devices, but I doubt that many will find a use for such a port in a high-end motherboard.
Outside of these expansion possibilities, ECS' motherboard also comes with on-board Power and Reset buttons, a BIOS debug display, a raised 8-pin auxiliary CPU power connector and a rear mounted Clear CMOS button.
Also in the back, we find eight USB 2.0 and two USB 3.0 ports, two eSATA ports, a shared keyboard and mouse PS/2 port, dual Gigabit LAN ports, 7.1-channel audio with optical S/PDIF out and a Bluetooth transmitter.
Two more USB 3.0 ports are available via an on-board header which is located right near the left margin of the PCB.
The ECS A990FXM-A can support processors with a maximum TDP of 140W and can run 2133MHz memory.
Even though the A990FXM-A has been officially announced, ECS hasn't disclosed any information regarding the price of this motherboard. Its availability is also unknown, but most AM3+ boards are expected to arrive by the end of June, according to AMD.