States MSI, Asrock and biostar are also on trouble. I think biostar would fail first. Like AMD and Nvidia we need more competition. Everyone seems to run Asus because they do make great boards, and it is up to other companies to step up the game. My worry is people will blindly buy Asus because they have a longstreak. If MSI or Evga made a perfect board then there might be a chance noone buys it because they always go to ASUS.

Thus I stay with gigabyte.

I didnt like ECS' boards too much, but losing the competition to other brands is def gonna hurt us as the pool gets smaller. I don't think MSI will go anywhere for awhile since they've made some great strides in recent years with their boards. My guess would be ASrock before biostar only because biostar probably has the numbers in low dollar penetration where as Asrock seems to try to play in big boy land and cant quite make it as fruitful as needed.

Got to love fan-boyz write ups...

Sorry, but EVGA's long track record of nothing but problematic motherboards instantly discludes them from my list. Biostar isn't a terrible company, but I had a problem with one in the past with a dead PCI slot. MSI and ASUS have always been rock solid stable for me. I will always go to ASUS first, then MSI. Hence why I bought a MSI laptop.

To be honest I never heard of ECS. Im sure some people will be upset to see them go.
I will say MSI and Asus make a solid product at a number of different prices and should be able to fill the void for those people who used ECS.

Used an ECS board once a few years ago, it wasn't something spectacular to oc but as far as stock clocks go it gave me no problems. I always saw them as only stock, low priced boards (almost OEM like). Not sure how I feel about seeing them go, I felt bad for other mobo manufacturers go like Abit, DFI, Epox.

I believe Biostar will finish with motherboard production too.
Who will buy some other motherboards if ASUS sell Hero for 150$.
I always think who will choose something like that if GIGABYTE and ASUS offer for 20$ more same or better.
On Taiwan I believe people are crazy for ROG motherboards.
 
For 5 years only ASUS, GIGABYTE, MSI, ASRock and EVGA will make desktop motherboards.
I saw and Supermicro make some models in ATX format. Somehow I feel quality of their PCB is not bad at all and for desktops if he work years in servers.
But I don't like because manufacturer of server motherboards and models for servers very often do not have new controllers and newest features. 
And again if someone want server quality and new features we again back on ASUS as best choice. with XX-E WS motherboards.  
They always work with all Intel Xeon and all Intel Extreme processors and optimization is best. I would love EVGA to offer that.
 
That mean two players stop with motherboard production ECS and Intel finished with X79 and Z87 chipset.
 
 
 
 

Baltothewolf
Sorry, but EVGA's long track record of nothing but problematic motherboards instantly discludes them from my list. Biostar isn't a terrible company, but I had a problem with one in the past with a dead PCI slot. MSI and ASUS have always been rock solid stable for me. I will always go to ASUS first, then MSI. Hence why I bought a MSI laptop.

My E655 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813188055) was trouble free and allowed my i5 760 to hit 4.2GHz without any issues.. tough luck.

Not to surprising based on my actually experience with ECS... bad all bad... my Fathers last motherboard was ECS .. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813135340 (H77) Never had as many issues as I had with that. I eventually got tired of the issues of it not wanting to boot and just swapped him my i5 4690K and my back up Hero VII Z97.

revenantx02
supposedly ECS has put out a statement saying its untrue, they will continue to make boards for DIY
http://www.anandtech.com/show/9400/ecs-to-remain-in-motherboard-market-dispels-rumor

And so it seems no one reads the whole thread.

I recall a store had a board made by ECS that had 2 slots for DDR2 and 2 slots of DDR3 which for AMD processors. My Phenom II X4 965 CPU can support DDR2 or DDR3 depending on the motherboard configuration.
 
My old M4A77D board is DDR2 and socket AM3 which is what my Phenom is.
 
My new board is the M5A99FX PRO R2.0 which is DDR3 based.
 
Depending on the requirements, that hybrid ECS board which was not expensive had some merit, but I like full ATX boards which are somewhat more expensive