ECS Presents the “NonStop” Motherboard Series

Taiwanese motherboard company ECS has just announced the new “NonStop” motherboard series, on its official website. These motherboards benefit from a special electric discharge protection and are certified by “NonStop” testing for 72 hours.

ECS motherboards have long been known for being affordable and offering “good-enough” reliability. The price advantage offered by the company helped it to achieve sales much greater than any of the traditional motherboard market players. Despite offering much less features and lower reliability, ECS succeeded in a market where innovative manufacturers like EpoX, Abit and DFI have failed. Other players wanted a piece of this low to mid-end motherboard market that ECS was ruling. ASUS motherboard company founded AsRock as a direct ECS competitor.

The purpose was to sell affordable mainboards without affecting the brand image of ASUS. AsRock was very successful in sales and has even started manufacturing premium products of its own and this apparently forced ECS to offer more features and reliability. ECS “NonStop” certified products will utilize only 100% solid Apache long-life capacitors. These motherboards also come with a comprehensive electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection called "Thor".

The 100% ESD protection on “NonStop” motherboards is achieved with special circuitry, consisting of multiple extra components. ECS claims that “Thor” follows the toughest NASA guidelines for preventing damage from accidental electrostatic discharges. “NonStop” certified motherboards must go through 72 hours of military grade testing. The suite of tests are called by ECS “SuperMarathon 3x” and it also includes the “Sahara Severe Test.”

This is a 50°C severe environment test which we find most useful as many components are recommended to be used in environmental settings of about 40 degrees Celsius or lower. The problem is that most systems are much hotter on the inside of the case when the room temperature is 40 degrees. A 50 degrees Celsius environmental test is very useful for certifying the reliability of a mainboard. Currently, all ECS mainboards belonging to the Black-series are “NonStop” certified. 

Models complaint to the “NonStop” standard include: X79R-AX, X79R-AX deluxe, A990FXM-A, A990FXM-A Deluxe, A75F-A, H61H2-A2 Deluxe, Z77H2-AX, Z77H2-A2X, and Z77H2-A2X deluxe.

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