ECS H67H2-M Black Edition Motherboard Review

ECS H67H2-M: Breaking Free of the Low End

It’s no secret that Intel’s Sandy Bridge CPU’s are still the talk of the town. Many enthusiasts and system builders are frothing at the mouth waiting for the B3 stepping chipset to become available. With the IRS returning overpaid tax money, this was the time many had planned to upgrade. Several announcements have been made over the past few days leading us to understand that the drought will be over soon!

A part of Sandy Bridge that we haven’t yet looked at was one of the biggest features of the 2nd Generation Core processor, the integrated graphics. Intel was able to leverage 32nm technology in building a single die that houses both the CPU and GPU. This means that power use and GPU performance are much improved over Clarkdale/Arrandale processors since that CPU family used a separate die on the processor package to get its integrated graphics. The CPU gave up its integrated memory controller and instead used one on the GPU. This led to higher memory latency, lower memory bandwidth and ultimately lower performance. Though the CPU had great clock speeds, they were over priced for their performance, often being outperformed by Intel’s own Core i5 750 which cost less than a number of the Clarkdale i5 CPU’s.

Thankfully, that is now the past and Sandy Bridge has been executed nearly flawlessly. I say nearly because of chipset issues. Besides the B2 stepping SATA degradation recall, in order to make use of the on-die GPU you MUST use an H67 chipset (or upcoming Z67). One of the shortcomings of H67 is that you lose all ability to overclock the CPU and run memory beyond 1333MHz, but you do get the ability to overclock the GPU. With P67 you can overclock the CPU but it has no way to access the GPU. As I mentioned, Z67 is in the works and is designed to give us the best of both worlds.

Now with a better understanding of differences between the two current chipsets, let’s take a look at our first H67 motherboard, the ECS H67H2-M.

The ECS H67H2-M is part of their performance line of motherboards, also called Black Deluxe. As you can see, the Black Deluxe board packs in larger heat sinks, a striking dark grey and black color combination, all solid capacitors, and a number of other enthusiast level features.

• Six Super Speed USB3 ports
• SATA6
• Turbo Boost 2.0
• Dual Gigabit LAN with Teaming

ECS P67H2-A Specifications

CPU	LGA1155 socket for 2nd Generation Intel Core Family and Unlocked Processors Supports “Hyper-Threading” technology CPU DIM 5.0 GT/S
Chipset	Intel H67 Chipset
Memory	Dual-channel DDR3 Memory architecture 4 x 240 pin DDR3 DIMM sockets support up to 32GB Supports 1333 DDR3 SDRAM
Expansion Slots	1x PCI Express Gen2 x16 slots 2 x PCI Express x1 Slots 1 x PCI slots
Storage	Supported by Intel H67 Chipset 3 x SATAII 3.0 Gb/s Host Controllers 2 x SATAIII 6.0 Gb/s Host Controllers 1 x eSATA 3.0 Gb/s
Audio	Realtek ALC892 8-Ch HD Audio Codec Compliant with HD Audio specifications
Rear Panel I/O	1 x PS/2 keyboard and PS/2 mouse combo connector 1 x Clear CMOS button 2 x usb3.0 ports 4 x USB2.0 ports 2 x Dual RealTek RTL8111E Gigabit Fast Ethernet Controllers with Teaming 1 x Audio port with 6 audio jacks
Internal I/O connectors and headers	1 x 24 pin Power Supply Connector, 8-pin 12V connector 2 x Serial ATA 6 Gb/s connector 3 x Serial ATA 3Gb/s connector 1 x USB3 front header 4 x USB2 headers 1 x front panel audio header 1 x SPDIF out header 1 x front panel header 1 x ME UNLOCK header 1 x Reset button 1 x Power button 1 x COM header CPU_FAN/SYS_FAN/PWR_FAN connectors
System BIOS	AMI BIOS with 32Mb SPI ROM Supports Plug and Play, STR (S3) / STD (S4) , Hardware monitor, Multi Boot Supports ACPI & DMI Audio, LAN, can be disabled in BIOS F7 hot key for boot up devices option Support Page Up clear CMOS Hotkey Supports ACPI 3.0 revision Support Graphic Over-Clocking Support Dual-Monitor function Support eJIFFY Support eBLU Support eDLU Support eSF Support ECS M.I.B III Utility Graphic Voltage Adjustable CPU voltage adjustable IMC Voltage Adjustable Memory voltage adjustable