ECS H55H-I Review: Mini-ITX at a Sensible Price
by Rajinder Gill on May 6, 2010 6:59 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Final words
Much of what the ECS H55H-I can and cannot do bears a startling resemblance to Intel’s DH57JG. The only major difference is that ECS are keeping a loose grip on the voltage reins for all processors at present, so you get more room to play with overclocking. Of course, there are no guarantees that future BIOSes will allow such a free range of voltage, especially if users end up blowing up FETs and such.
Whichever way ECS decide to lean, there are a few things on the H55H-I that are in need of attention – unsurprisingly, its ECS’ decision to allow overclocking that opens the can of worms. The CPU multiplier ratio control option should either be removed altogether, or it should be made to work. In its current state the option is useless, serving only to create non-POST situations. This is the second motherboard we've reviewed from ECS in recent months with this problem.
One of the other things that come to light when a BIOS setting is wrong, is that there’s no way to get the board to POST unless you clear CMOS. The trouble is that the CMOS clear jumper location is not easy to access when this board is in a case, so ECS would be wise to spend some time refining the BIOS code to perform some kind of watchdog procedure. These are the kind of things we expect to see implemented if overclocking features are present - regardless of price.
On the bright side, you do get a 3 year limited warranty, which at least inspires a little confidence that ECS will take care of you if the event of a failure.
To cap this all off, yes, the H55H-I is competitive with other mini-ITX products based upon its price and basic functionality, it makes a great little stock-runner or LAN PC. However, if you're thinking of overclocking with this board, we'd say that ECS is a couple of BIOSes away from a glowing recommendation - we'd like to see a little more finesse please!
67 Comments
View All Comments
Mr Perfect - Thursday, May 6, 2010 - link
I was thinking exactly the same thing. Kill all the legacy ports already!The only reasonable reason anyone seems to come up with for needing PS/2 is old KVMs. We've been using PS/2 to USB converters for those at work, so even that's not a big problem.
jaydee - Thursday, May 6, 2010 - link
How did an i5-661 beat an i5-750 in the AutoCAD benchmark...Rajinder Gill - Thursday, May 6, 2010 - link
Higher Turbo frequency I think.danger22 - Thursday, May 6, 2010 - link
so there is no raid whatsoever on H55? what mini-itx boards have decent raid support? anything on par with ICH10 that comes on full sized boards?MadMan007 - Thursday, May 6, 2010 - link
H57 has RAID, H55 doesn't.Rajinder Gill - Thursday, May 6, 2010 - link
Anand compared SATA performance of a few chipsets here:http://www.anandtech.com/show/2973/6gbps-sata-perf...
Rajinder Gill - Thursday, May 6, 2010 - link
Forgot to add - the Intel DH57JG will do RAID...takerangle - Thursday, May 6, 2010 - link
Is that typo sir?http://anandtech.com/show/3699/ecs-h55hi-miniitx-a...
Rajinder Gill - Thursday, May 6, 2010 - link
Thanks, fixed!RustyRat - Thursday, May 6, 2010 - link
There is a continuous reference to "30 amps" .. is that a Typo? ... "30 amps" is a lotta power!