ECS doubles FM1 range of motherboards

Hardware manufacturer ECS has doubled its range of motherboards for the Fusion platform with the introduction of three motherboards with the FM1 socket for AMD’s A-Series APUs. The three boards have the A55 chipset on board.

ECS has released three A55 motherboards. Two of them are cast in the matx format, while the third got the full atx format. The largest board, the A55F-A, has four memory slots, two PCI-Express x16 slots and an equal number of x1 slots. Three PCI slots, five SATA 300 ports and twelve USB 2.0 ports are also available. Faster interfaces such as SATA-600 and USB 3.0 ports are absent.

The two matx boards, A55F-M2 and A55F-M3, only have two memory slots and one pci-express-x16 slot each. The M2 has two PCI Express x1 slots in addition to the PCI slot, while the M3 also has a PCI slot, but only one x1 slot. The M2 has six SATA 300 ports and twelve USB 2.0 ports, and the M3 has four and eight respectively. The M3 also only has a D-sub connector for video, while the M2 expands it with an HDMI port.

The A55 chipset is the budget version for AMD’s A-Series APUs or Fusion processors. The chipset for the Llano processors is somewhat simpler than the A75 chipset, which ECS has already equipped three motherboards with. The A55 chipset does not have SATA-600 support on board and ECS does not provide the boards with USB 3.0 connectivity, as the A75 boards have. ECS has not yet announced prices, but they would be below the level of the A75 motherboards.