Details are out on yet another Z77 based board coming to market; the Z77H2-A3 from ECS which caters to the more budget focused crowd. A couple "Black Extreme" series boards in the Z77H2-AX and Z77H2-A2X were spotted from the vendor at CeBIT yesterday, but the Z77H2-A3 is trimmed down in features and price to nestle into the sub-$150 bracket.While all the connectivity and overclocking functions native to the Z77 chipset remain in place, this board is only designed to accommodate single graphics cards and its CPU socket is powered by a simple 6-phase VRM. There are four DDR3 slots residing on the board despite the lesser more narrow dimensions of the PCB at 305 x 210 mm.
The expansion slot array comes in the form of a single PCI-E 3.0 x16 slot, four PCI-E x1 and two legacy PCI slots. When reflecting on the Z77 chipset's characteristics, remaining intact on the Z77H2-A3 are a couple SATA 6Gbps ports, four SATA 3Gbps ports, 8-channel HD audio, Gigabit ethernet four USB 3.0 ports (two on the rear I/O and two via motherboard headers) and display connectivity via D-Sub and DVI/HDMI.ECS has implemented a UEFI graphical BIOS for this board along with its EZ-Charger feature for boosted USB device charging to your Apple device or otherwise. All in all, not too shabby if the pricing is indeed low enough when it hits shelves.Source: Lab501.ro

Read more: ECS to offer Z77 on a budget with Z77H2-A3 by VR-Zone.com