Thread: ECS P55H-A Motherboard

The new P55 chipset-based motherboards that have recently trickled into the market are premium models. However, there are a few budget P55 motherboards such as the ECS P55H-A that won't pinch your pocket. The P55H-A doesn't pack a lot of bells and whistles but offers a great mix of features for its price. Most of the motherboal d's features are courtesy Intel P55 Express chipset. It supports 16 GB of DDR3 memory and offers 14 USB ports and six SATA ports-more than enough to build a high-end gaming Pc. The two PCle x16 slots support CrossFire in dual x8 mode. The only extra feature that ECS has added is an eSATA port on the rear panel which is supported by the JMicron JMB361 controller. The rear panel sports PS/2 ports, eight USB ports, gigabit Ethernet port, optical S/PDIF out and discrete 7.1-channel audio jacks.

The P55H-A comes bundled with four SATA cables, an IDE cable and the ECS eJIFFY application disc. ECS eJIFFY is a tiny Linux-based 05 which loads in a few seconds after the POST screen appears. It offers tools for chatting, web browsing and viewing photos. The P55H-A belongs to ECS's Black Edition series and hence features a black PCB. The red and bright yellow expansion slots and fancy heatsinks for the voltage regulators give this board a funky look. Although the heatsinks do a good job, they are a bit loose and shaky. The layout of the board is good except for the 8-pin power connector that's placed above the PCI express slot. ECS has provided buttons for power and reset near the SATA ports and a clear CMOS button on the rear panel. The 7-segment display debugger is also a useful feature for detecting errors during POST.