ECS P55H-AK Black review

mertesnmertesn I am Bobby MillerYukon, OK Icrontian
edited September 2010 in Science & Tech

Comments

  • Romad317Romad317 Member
    edited September 2010
    Oh my! Drool! This is proof that I should be single, and not paying for useless crap like kids dental work and food. Ah, for the good old days.
  • Cliff_ForsterCliff_Forster Icrontian
    edited September 2010
    The black PCB and the heat pipes on this thing! This has to be the best looking motherboard I have ever seen. Of course, if it were an AM3 it would be even sexier, and actually useable by those of us with decerning tastes in microprocessing. :wink:
  • mertesnmertesn I am Bobby Miller Yukon, OK Icrontian
    edited September 2010
    It is a great looking board, definitely one to put in a "show off" case. So far they don't offer an AMD board with the same feature set. I suspect if they were to release a Black board with an 890FX chipset it would be a competitor, but at the moment they only have 890G and GX variants.

    Where platforms are concerned, I don't really have a preference. I have both AMD and Intel systems and they both perform admirably.
  • custompcmaxcustompcmax Minnesota
    edited September 2010
    Beautiful board (love the black theme)... nice review too :)
  • OptixOptix New Brunswick, Canada
    edited September 2010
    Holy hell! Is it possible to be in love with a motherboard?

    Now if they'd just make it as functional to match the looks this thing (along with matching up against similar offerings from the other big three - Asus, Gigabyte and MSI) is a sure fire winner for someone with a case with a painted interior. Nice to see they finally moved the 8-pin connector up near the top of the board like everybody else.
  • mertesnmertesn I am Bobby Miller Yukon, OK Icrontian
    edited September 2010
    Optix wrote:
    Holy hell! Is it possible to be in love with a motherboard?

    Now if they'd just make it as functional to match the looks this thing (along with matching up against similar offerings from the other big three - Asus, Gigabyte and MSI) is a sure fire winner for someone with a case with a painted interior. Nice to see they finally moved the 8-pin connector up near the top of the board like everybody else.
    Not sure what you mean by functional. If you are referring to the layout, I haven't had a single problem working with the motherboard...it's one of the easiest boards to work with. If you mean features, it's not really lacking anything.
  • ardichokeardichoke Icrontian
    edited September 2010
    Yeah, looking at the specs I can't think of anything else I would want on a motherboard... realistically anyway. I mean, if someone somehow integrated a fine Italian espresso maker into a motherboard that would always be win, but otherwise I'm pretty sure it has everything one could want.
  • edited September 2010
    WOW! And I was thinking tripple heatsink infested designs are things of past. This one is a definite looker but would've been better if a more detailed power consumption/temp reading was provided. Also p55 is good for memory overclocking so it'll be pretty interesting to find how this board fares.
  • mertesnmertesn I am Bobby Miller Yukon, OK Icrontian
    edited September 2010
    ***Update***
    I've been able to push the board even further as part of another review. So far I've gotten to 3204MHz (177*18) with the RAM running at DDR3-2133 speeds. Rock solid. I'm still learning about tweaking the settings to produce better results, but the more I work with this board, the better it gets.
  • OptixOptix New Brunswick, Canada
    edited September 2010
    mertesn wrote:
    Not sure what you mean by functional. If you are referring to the layout, I haven't had a single problem working with the motherboard...it's one of the easiest boards to work with. If you mean features, it's not really lacking anything.
    I was mostly referring to the fact that their previous Black edition boards didn't overclock as well and didn't feature as many options in the BIOS as Gigabyte, Asus or MSI. Even ASRock seemed to stick it to 'em.

    I haven't had a chance to really do anything more than a quick cruise through the article so I apologize if this is just wasted bandwidth. :)
  • mertesnmertesn I am Bobby Miller Yukon, OK Icrontian
    edited September 2010
    Optix wrote:
    I was mostly referring to the fact that their previous Black edition boards didn't overclock as well and didn't feature as many options in the BIOS as Gigabyte, Asus or MSI. Even ASRock seemed to stick it to 'em.

    I haven't had a chance to really do anything more than a quick cruise through the article so I apologize if this is just wasted bandwidth. :)
    The i7 870 used in this test maxes out at 3.52GHz (160*22) regardless of the board used. I had no problems reaching that speed. While overclocking the Mushkin RAM used in another review I was able to get the BCLK pushed to 178MHz (178*18). I believe the quality of this board surpasses any other Black Edition board that ECS has produced. As far as the BIOS is concerned, the only thing I feel it lacks is the option to turn off the splash screen during POST. I haven't noticed any missing settings.
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