Introduction

2017 was a huge year for motherboard manufacturers, with no less than four new platform launches in a little over twelve months. Coffee Lake's launch may not have been the most surprising of those, but it has proven to be an exciting one. ECS has put fourth some interesting boards over the past few generations, products with provocative names like "Claymore" and, of course, "Lightsaber". ECS is looking to start 2018 off right with the newest addition to that Lightsaber brand, the ECS Z370-Lightsaber.

The ECS Z370-Lightsaber takes the stage with promising features, like a 14 phase power design, dual BIOS, Intel Optane support, and a plethora of other overclocker friendly features. ECS has produced solid hardware in the past, offering durable, well-designed motherboards. The company's BIOS and software offerings haven't always matched up, however. The last few generations of Intel CPUs have been very forgiving in that regard, requiring very few options and very little BIOS optimization to achieve a respectable overclock. Users could expect to see meaningful overclocking by just changing the core multiplier and upping the vCore.

Coffee Lake should be the same since the unlocked K chips only need an increased multiplier and core voltage. However, the addition of two extra cores on this newest generation makes Coffee Lake a little more power-hungry when it comes to overclocking. Simply porting a BIOS over from Z270 without any back-end support for the increased power draw could lead to an overclocked CPU throttling regardless of the user's settings. So, has ECS done their homework and delivered a motherboard package capable of living up to its "Lightsaber" branding?

Specifications

Packaging and Contents

The Front of the ECS Z370-Lightsaber's box is a weathered gold with a black "Leet" logo prominently in the middle, along with an ECS logo in the top-left corner. I like the simplicity; however, I find it odd to have such a shiny box for a matte black board. The back of the box is well organized, featuring an image of the board as well as a diagram of the rear I/O. I like this layout with some basic information along the left side of the box and a more thorough list of features along the right.


Opening the box reveals the board in its anti-static bag with all the accessories right underneath. This packaging layout is simple and efficient.


There are only a few included accessories; I think two SATA cables may not be enough for many people. However, with M.2 drives quickly becoming mainstream and affordable, I can understand the reasoning behind it. I do like that the I/O shield is black, matching the board. Small touches can make a big difference in terms of finished looks.

• Manual and support DVD
• 1x Rear I/O cover
• 2x SATA 6 Gb/s cables

Board Layout

Pulling the board out of its bag reveals a matte black PCB and black heatsinks, a handsome aesthetic that should match up well with most builds. The branding is pretty minimal, with "Z370 Lightsaber" in white just under the first PCI slot and a white dragon to the right of that. The placement of these two means both are covered up once the graphics card is installed. The "Leet" logo on the heatsink is removable, should you feel it doesn't fit your theme. The ECS Z370-Lightsaber is a good-looking board, but those looks really suffer since there are uncovered silver bits on the rear I/O. A black shield over that area would make for a welcome enhancement.


The socket is open and uncluttered, and cooler clearance shouldn't be an issue. The four DIMM slots sit to the right, and the first M.2 slot is just beneath those.


The second M.2 slot is between the second and third PCI x16 slots.


The ECS Z370-Lightsaber has three PCIe x16 slots and three PCIe x1 ports. There are six standard SATA 6 Gb/s plugs on the board's right edge, angled at 90 degrees. Two of these slots are controlled by an ASMedia ASM 1061 chip, while the other four are handled by the Z370 chipset. Two fan headers and no less than four RGB LED headers are joined by the usual front panel and USB and audio headers along the bottom of the board.


The rear I/O on the ECS Z370-Lightsaber is reasonably well populated; four USB 3.0 ports in blue with two 3.1 ports in teal, all type-A. The omission of a type-C port is pretty baffling. There are four USB 2.0 ports, two yellow ports by the PS/2 and two red ports by the Ethernet port. According to the manual, the yellow ports are only for the keyboard and mouse, and the red ports are only for a "rezound vigor USB 2.0 device". I don't know what that is, but a quick test with HDTune Pro shows that these ports function like any other USB 2.0 port would. For display, there is an HDMI and a DisplayPort, but no DVI. An optical SPDIF out port and clear CMOS button are both present and welcome inclusions. The six audio jacks are not color-coded, which is an odd and annoying choice considering how colorful the various USB ports are.