Presentation, Bundle and Manual
ECS ship the PF4 in a big box, a good 50% bigger than the usual ATX mainboard box. The box art uses a techno aesthetic that's appealing in this reviewer's eyes. Combined with the size, it should catch your eye if you were shopping for a mainboard in your local component store. Online, box art matters less, but it's always interesting to see what companies come up with.
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The rear of the box shows you the board features. Some are marketing driven but the majority are good descriptions of what a PF4 can provide.
Bundle
The bundle is where ECS really go to town.
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You get a pair of rounded ATA cables, rounded floppy cable, two SATA data cables, Ethernet patch cable, molex power splitter providing two SATA power, parallel port ribbon, backup BIOS chip, I/O shield, I/O USB2.0 and FireWire400 ports and a front-mounted 3.5 inch drive bay convertor for them. Most of that is standard bundle kit, but the Ethernet cable, BIOS chip and convertor bay for the USB2.0 and FireWire400 ports are definitely value added items. And that's not all.
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ECS also supply an 802.11b WiFi adaptor that uses a USB2.0 port (that you can see sticking out of the extender base), along with an extender that lets you site the adaptor somewhere conducive to a good signal. Added to the board's on-board Ethernet adaptor duo (one of which is GigE), that's three network adaptors shipped with the PF4. ASUS ship a couple of boards that have the same capabilities, but apart from them, ECS are the only IHV that I know of that ship a triplet of networking devices with their mainboards, on-board or otherwise.
One of the best board bundles I've seen in a long time, reminiscent of the kind of thing ABIT used to give you with their MAX range. That it doesn't impact price much at all (more on that later) is even better.
Manual
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The PF4 manuals are simple to read and easy to navigate, just as they should be. The main mainboard manual is a little short of info in places, compared to the tomes that ship with other mainboards, but it's not short on the essentials.
The software bundle is as impressive as the extra hardware bundle. You get full versions of Intervideo WinRip2, PC-cillin, InTouch (remote access software), DPU (file restoration), ShowShifter (PVR software), WinDVD, ProMagic (system restore) and WinDVD Creator (DVD authoring). None of the applications is class-leading (at a quick glance), but they definitely add value, especially in the case of the anti-virus and system restore software. Full manuals for everything are provided on the CDs.
The software and hardware bundles are definitely high points of the PF4 experience.
