The ECS Black Series GF200A motherboard is not difficult to install. It is not as complex as some others turn out to be. The board has a good layout for the memory slots and add on card slots as well. You can as well directly power off and on the motherboard and reboot too with switches. That is something I am not used to seeing.
The north bridge chip has a tendency to get a bit hot. The location of it could be better but it is not the end of the world. I used a Radeon HD series video card with this motherboard and it is snug against the north bridge, and that is why I am sort of unnerved by the location of the north bridge.
Now the positioning of the video card may mean you cannot put a fan on top of the north bridge but this would depend if you use a large video card or not. When turning the motherboard on for the first time be mindful that the CMOS jumper by default is in the clear position so you would want to make sure to set this accordingly.
Some people have reported that the BIOS is originally set on AHCI for drive formatting and this definitely can make a problem if it is not changed to SATA. After a few minor concerns like these it is worth the time and effort involved. Also, the software disc that came with the motherboard will not work if you have a 32-bit operating system installed.
There is a very good price to performance ratio associated with this motherboard. If you can get around the odd things there is not really much wrong with the ECS BLACK SERIES GF8200A. It should be noted that it comes with GeForce 8200 HDMI video on-board.
