Choosing the Best H55/H57 Motherboard - Part 1

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• Rajinder Gill - Monday, February 1, 2010 - link

  Hi Rick,
  
  I have not heard of or seen anything that offers 10 onboard SATA ports on H55 yet. If I hear of anything, I'll let you know.
  
  regards
  Raja

• Rick83 - Monday, February 1, 2010 - link

  Many thanks :-)

• marc1000 - Monday, February 1, 2010 - link

  Bottom line: DON'T BUY anything from Intel this generation. If you are not an advanced user who knows exactly what you are doing, then it is best to skip completely the current products.
  
  I'm saying this because there is a great chance you will pay more for something that offer less, or will get a crappy product, or will buy something believing it was "awesome" only to latter find it was actually "mediocre".
  
  This is because the RIDICULOUS naming scheme Intel has chosen to use in the current CPU+Chipset.
  
  Like some other user pointed here already: there is not ONE way to know if you are buing a dual or quad-core CPU simply by looking at it's name. You MUST know the exact specification based on model number (that does not mean nothing more than an obscure performance indicator).
  
  And the trend seems to continue with the chipsets... you get a chipset that is more expensive and with less resources but the name makes it "look" like it is better!

• HobHayward - Monday, February 1, 2010 - link

  Unless I'm mistaken your description of the instant boot utility is misleading. At least on my ASRock x58 extreme, the instant boot function overrides the standard shut own procedure, and instead causes the system to restart, boot all the way back into windows, and then put the system into sleep mode. This way you have a fresh boot when you return to your computer, without having to wait for a full boot.

• Rajinder Gill - Monday, February 1, 2010 - link

  Sorry, you are correct, I've added some text. The latter feature is akin to hibernate (suspend to disc) for fast boot.

• michal1980 - Monday, February 1, 2010 - link

  I'm waiting for an editorial. The fact that you had to wait for multiple bios revisions for a STABLE build, is imho unaccetable.
  
  I almost bought one of these boards, and then remebered my rule, wait at least 6 months. Because mobo makers release CRAP. And no one in the industry seems to call them on it. People that work for anandtech have an insider edge for support, end users get fu*ked with shitty parts.
  
  Is it really that hard to launch with a stable OS? If the end user is to be a fu*king beta tester, then I want free boards.

• YellowWing - Monday, February 1, 2010 - link

  I am interested in seeing more power figures for these boards with only the IGP. One of the unknowns in building a small HTPC with these boards is sizing the power supply. Many of the smaller cases come with small wattage power supplies.
  
  Power figures for each board with only the IGP will help size the minimum supply needed for these boards.
  
  I would also like to see the figures for the i3-530, which may be the most popular CPU for a HTPC build on Clarksdale

• Bloodx - Tuesday, February 2, 2010 - link

  1080P/24 does not work correct. Until Intel releases a driver that corrects there is no point using this for an HTPC.
  
  

• piasabird - Monday, February 1, 2010 - link

  So why not just use an E7500 and an integrated MATX motherboard?
  I have not seen any real comparison between that and an I3 entry level processor. My guess is besides HDMI there is not much difference. One advantage is with an older chipset you have more stability.

• hyvonen - Monday, February 1, 2010 - link

  Why i3/i5 + H55/H57?
  1) Higher performance (both CPU and IGP).
  2) Lower power consumption at load.
  3) DTS-MA/Dolby TrueHD Bitstream support through HDMI.
  4) Dual hardware HD decoding.