Motherboards based on Intel's Core i7 and Core is have been doing the rounds these days. The P55 motherboards that support them seem to trickling down in price to answer the call of the masses. The Core i7/i5s have surely shown their mettle on the performance front and board manufacturers are surely taking note.

The Asus P7P55-M is a micro ATX board that should appeal to those who are on a budget. Based on the Intel P55 chipset the board has support for 16 GB of DDR3 memory and offers 14 USB ports along with six sATA ports. You will find the usual PCle x16 slot alongside two PCle 1x and a single PCI slot. Towards the rear YOU'll find the PS/2 port, legacy COM port, eight USB ports, a gigabit Ethernet port, FireWire, and 8-channel audio jacks. The P7P55-M features a 5-phase power design and uses all-solid capacitors. Fitting the board with a large heatsink shouldn't be a problem as the CPU area is free of large capacitors. A very thoughtful addition is the single clip RAM slots which allow you to freely remove or install RAM chips without having to remove the graphics card. The board features a recovery tool that allows you to restore a corrupted BIOS.

VERDICT: A worthy contender if you want to build a rock-solid Pc.

FOR: Excellent layout, good performance.

AGAINST: No eSATA port.

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