ECS P55H-A – Design

The ECS P55H-A is a surprisingly skillful looking motherboard, which helps it over come the impression of it being a little cheap. Still, when compared to the Asrock P55 Extreme which costs just $20 more in that location are a few noticeable downsides to the design and layout of this motherboard.

At offset we were impressed by how much room in that location was betwixt the four DIMM slots and the principal PCI Limited x16 slot. This extra infinite has been made available due to the fact that the ECS P55H-A features just two PCI Limited x16 slots instead of three. There's too one PCIe x1 slot and one PCIe x4 slot along with a pair of conventional PCI slots at the lesser of the board.

While the ECS P55H-A is non quite as well equipped as the other P55 motherboards we have looked at then far in terms of expansion, it does manage provide enough room to expand for the average user. The same can be said about the board's storage capabilities every bit there are just half-dozen onboard SATA ports, though we are happy to report that they have been mounted at a 90-degree angle.

For the virtually part the pattern of the P55H-A is great which makes our one and only real upshot a footling frustrating. For some reason ECS has positioned the 8-pin ATX 12v power connector in what is most the worst position possible. Rather than locating this power connector on the top left mitt corner of the motherboard as most every other manufacturer has done, ECS decided to stick information technology above the chief PCIe x16 slot.

This is non exactly the stop of the world simply information technology does brand installation slightly more difficult as users accept to run the thick power cablevision half fashion beyond the motherboard past the CPU libation. This is a disappointing design flaw by ECS but it is actually the only blemish on the P55H-A'south report card.

ECS has as well gone with a small passive heatsink for the P55 chip which they take labeled "Blackness Series." The board's power circuitry is cooled via two separate heatsinks. None of the heatsinks use heatpipe applied science though truth be told we practise non feel it is necessary anyway.

Delivering and regulating ability to the LGA1156 processor is a 4-stage ability design while an additional two-phase power design is used for upcoming processors that feature an on-die GPU. When all is said and done the ECS P55H-A features the weakest PWM design of all the P55 boards included in our roundup, and so information technology will exist interesting to run across what kind of impact this has on the boards overclocking functioning.

Finally when stepping effectually to the I/O panel we have a pair of PS/2 ports, CMOS reset push, eight USB 2.0 ports, v audio jacks plus a Due south/PDIF connector along with a single LAN port and eSATA port. Overall the layout and design of the ECS P55H-A is good plenty to satisfy almost users, especially those on a tight budget.