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ECS Z97I-DRONE Mini-ITX Motherboard Review

Motherboards/Intel S1150 by stefan @ 2014-12-03

ECS does not disappoint with the release of the cheap ECS Z97I-Drone which allows installation of a powerful Haswell processor which can be paired with RAM up to 16GB and eventually a potent VGA card inside the provided PCI Express x16 slot; be warned however that using a beefy CPU cooler will likely cover the PCI-Express slot completely so we would recommend either sticking with the stock Intel cooler or adopting an all-in-one water cooling solution, which is so accessible these days.

A Closer Look Contd.

Near the CPU socket we have the a 5-phase VRM with ICY chokes, Dual-Advanced MOSFET technology, superior Japanese capacitors and a simple but quite efficient heatsink:

The Hybrid ISL6376 Digital PWM is designed to manage the microprocessor and memory voltages:

Despite the low space available on the card, we have available one M.2 expansion socket for Wi-Fi / Bluetooth solutions:

Two memory slots are available for installing a maximum of 16GB:

The upper side of the board is a little bit more crowded and here we will find the 24-pin ATX power connector, one USB 3.0 header, one USB 2.0 header but also the F_Panel header:

Near the small themed Z97 PCH heatsink, we also have available five SATA3 ports available:

Near the CMOS chip we have some additional fan headers:

As expected, a 4-pin CPU power connector is located near the VRM:

As outputs, we have a full block of USB 2.0 ports (four in total), one DVI-D port, one DisplayPort and one HDMI, four USB 3.0 ports but also the audio jacks and a SPDIF optical solution:

The back side of the board features some additional technology logos:

ECS has also placed there the Intel I218-V Gigabit Fast Ethernet Controller:

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