october 25 2010 review by pureoverclock

The board's layout is good but there are a few basic design issues, such as the location of the power/reset buttons and POST code display. There are two additional USB 3.0 front panel ports, and the versatility of connections is also well done. In terms of performance, the BIOS isn't quite as robust, when compared to a premium motherboard. The organization in the menus is a bit confusing, and voltage tweaks aren't as finely tuned as they should be at this level. ECS is typically known for providing excellent value but that's not really the case with this board.

Overclocking:

With base clock overclocking the reviewers reached 196MHz with anb Intel Core i5 655k and the max overclock was 4.4GHz.

Test Setup:

Prolimatech Megahalems CPU Cooler with a 25mm thick fan, Intel Core i5 655k and a ECS GeForce GTX 460 graphics card.

Benchmarks:

No benchmarks were tested.

Compared To:

This mainboard was not comapred to another board.

august 31 2010 review by tbreak

Conclusion:

The extra USB3 and SATA3 ports add to the overall expandability of the board and the overclocking potential of this mainboard is very good. If you want to build a capable machine with a relatively low budget consider the ECS P55H-AK Black Series motherboard.

Overclocking:

This mobo doesn't disappoint in overclocking. Without changing the voltage and everything else on auto, the reviewers managed to raise the base clock from 133MHz to 166MHz, giving the Core i5 750 a stable clock speed of 3.34GHz, the cooler used was the Intel stock heatsink. With a better heatsink you'll probably reach the 4GHz barrier easily.

Test Setup:

• CPU : Intel Core i7 750
• Memory : 2GB DDR3 1333MHz Corsair XMS3-1333
• Video Card : ASUS ENGTX 280
• PSU : Corsair 1000W

Benchmarks:

7zip, Starcraft 2, 3D Mark Vantage, Cinebench, Far Cry 2, PC mark vantage, x264 HD.

Compared to:

This mainboard was not compared to another board, instead in some benchmarks it was compared to its own overclocking results.

august 17 2010 review by guru3d

Conclusion:

This board is designed for the mainstream to low-level enthusiast, and offers excellent baseline performance. The board is also relatively overclocker friendly to the novice that just wants a little more extra performance with quick overclock functions. This mobo is a feature-rich attractive looking solution, and is one of the fastest performing P55 motherboard the reviewers tested.

Overclocking:

Core i7 870 overclocking An Intel Core i7 870 was OCed @ 4023 MHz, DDR3 memory @ 2200 MHz.

The reviewers encountered issues like :

1. Hit save and exit in the BIOS .. the board shuts down. It does not auto restart so you'll need to manually enable it again by pressing power on.
2. The diagnostic POST LED will display error and status codes, but ECS forgot to list the diagnostic codes in the manual.

Benchmarks:

SiSoft Sandra, Lavalys Everest, 3D Mark 2006, 3D Mark Vantage, Handbrake, Medialink Espresso, Cinebench 11.5, Far Cry 2, Battlefield Bad Company 2, USB3, SATA3, Power Consumption.

Test Setup:

• Display : Dell 3007WFP
• Operating System : Windows 7 x64
• PSU : BFG EX 1200 Watt
• RAM : 2x2GB DDR3 1333 MHz G.Skill PI
• Video Card : Radeon HD 5870

Compared To:

• ASUS 880G, ASUS 890GX, ASUS C4F 890FX, ASUS Maximus III Extreme,
  ASUS Maximus III GENE, ASUS P7P55D Deluxe
• Gigabyte GA-890G, Gigabyte GA-P55-UD5
• Intel DP55KG
• Jetway HI05
• MSI 890FXA-GD70, MSI 890GX, MSI Big Bang Fuzion, MSI P55-GD80

august 13 2010 review by hardwaresecret

Conclusion:

ECS decided to change the design and has used gray and white colors for this mobo. The NVIDIA NF200 and the PLX PEX8608 chips, allow your system to maintain a high performance even if you install three graphics cards and decide to use the SATA3, USB3 and the Gigabit Ethernet connections all at the same time. Next to that this mobo has 2 eSATA connectors. This mainboard has decent overclocking options, but if you want more than increasing the basic clocks and voltages, you'll need have to look for another product.

Overclocking:

The reviewers did not perform any overclocking, there is a dedicated page that summerizes the overclocking options and there are also some BIOS screens.

The VRM:

This board has a 14-phase high-end voltage regulator circuit. 12 for the CPU main voltage and 2 for the VTT rail, which feeds the CPU integrated memory controller and Level 3 memory cache.

Compared to:

This mainboard was not compared to another board.

Benchmarks:

There were no benchmark results.