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Choosing the Best H55/H57 Motherboard - Part 1

 by Rajinder Gill on January 31, 2010 11:30 PM EST
56 Comments | Add A Comment
56 Comments

Final Words

This concludes part one of our coverage today. We've still got plenty of testing to do over the next few weeks, as there are a few areas we'd like to explore on some of these boards - namely Lynnfield overclocking, which we have not had enough time to perform on the H55/H57 chipsets just yet. The boards all POST when a Lynnfield processor CPU is inserted; we need to find out how well the cheaper boards handle a quad-core HT enabled CPU for overclocking, and if it's worth saving some money over entry to midrange P55 boards by using H55/H57 for the same task.

We're also looking at adding in some USB 3.0 testing in the near future; it's a matter of getting the right equipment in the lab to test these features in a meaningful way and to make sure that the boards work as they should.

Testing of the next four boards is already underway, and we're aiming to have something up in a couple of weeks. By then, we should be able to draw a firm conclusion of which board delivers the best functionality, performance, and overall feature set. The four boards we'll be looking at in the labs over the next two weeks are the Gigabyte H57M-USB3 and H55M-USB3, the BIOSTAR TH55HD, and finally the ECS H55H-M. Stay tuned….

Assuming you can get past Intel's kicker of locked single card GPU support on these boards and you really must buy now, then based upon our experience with the four boards we've looked at today you've got two reasonable choices. If your budget will stretch far enough, go for the ASUS P7H55D-M EVO. It's the smooth-operator of the bunch and should give you a trouble free time if you plan on any overclocking.

If you're after cheap and cheerful, the ASRock H55M-Pro will get the job done. The remaining quirks are a matter of overclocking preferences and overclocking functionality more than anything else. The current release BIOS has not given us any issues in normal usage scenarios at all so far and seems to make for a very stable PC build.


In closing, one thing we have noticed in our Clarkdale testing is that the CPUs overclock memory better when placed in some of the mid-high end P55 motherboards. It's not a huge gap but it becomes readily apparent at higher memory frequencies (over DDR3-1800MHz). We're not sure if this is due to vendors not having a full grip on the H55/H57 chipsets yet, or if it's down to design compromises on the H55/H57 motherboards we've tested - it's probably safe to say it's a bit of both. It'll be interesting to see how things develop in this regard over the coming weeks. This is another reason why it might be wise to wait a while and see how things pan out, depending on what you're looking for from the Clarkdale platform.

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

    Hi,

    For i3 530 results, you can compare the i3~i5 deltas in Anand's coverage here;

    http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?...">http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?...

    That gives as a basic idea of what to expect. The actaul IGP consumption variance from board to board will be aroud 10~15w I'd expect. I can run some fo this stuff in the follow up.

    regards
    Raja

  • hyvonen - Monday, February 1, 2010 - link

    Hi Raja,

    The MSI H55M-ED55 looks awesome for low-power HTPC, but the lack of undervolting is an incomprehensible miss on MSI's part. If they are as gung-ho about low-power as they claim, they should most definitely offer undervolting too.

    Could you guys suggest to MSI that they should add undervolting options to their future BIOS releases? I know Anand's team has a lot of influence on manufacturers, and this could really help out MSI and their customers alike.

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

    Sure thing, I'll pop it in a message to them.

    regards
    Raja

  • hyvonen - Tuesday, February 2, 2010 - link

    Thanks - this is much appreciated.

  • YellowWing - Monday, February 1, 2010 - link

    Thanks for the link to Anand article, but all of his power figures are for a machine using a graphics adapter. The i5-661 and i3-530 clock the graphics at different rates. So... imho it would be ideal to see idle and load figures for the i3-530.

  • hyvonen - Monday, February 1, 2010 - link

    SilenPCReview has a pretty good review on i5-661, where the system is configured for HTPC purposes (i.e., IGP & superlow power). They even touch on PSU efficiency at low power levels (the efficiency is pretty awful, even for a 450W 80plus PUS).

    http://www.silentpcreview.com/intel-clarkdale">http://www.silentpcreview.com/intel-clarkdale

    I've already decided to go with a PicoPSU that should give me about 80% efficiency at 20-30W idle.

  • hyvonen - Monday, February 1, 2010 - link

    Oh, and I wanted to point out that i5-661 was idling at extremely low power levels in that review. Moreover, I've seen another review somewhere comparing i5-661s and actual i3-530s - in that review, the i3-530 idle power was higher! My guess is that the idle power levels are so low in both that it's all within measurement noise.

  • nuudles - Monday, February 1, 2010 - link

    Hi Anand,

    Any news on when we will start seeing mini-ITX H55/57 boards? With more and more mATX boards mini-ITX is becoming the mATX of a couple of years ago.

    I know that there is one DFI mini-ITX p55 board at Newegg, but it is $147 with shipping, plus something like a i3 530 would be an ideal match for a mini-ITX H55 for a very small + low power system (HTPC, etc).

    Or if you add a small-ish video card like a 5750 then you have a nice and small (non-hardcore) gaming system.

    Thanks!

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

    Hi,

    We expect some of these vendors to have M-ITX boards somewhere over the next few months (hopefully).

    Zotac have a H55 model that should be on sale soon:

    http://pden.zotac.com/index.php?page=shop.product_...">http://pden.zotac.com/index.php?page=sh...mp;optio...


    Nothing concrete yet from the big players in terms of release dates/models etc unfortunately.

    regards
    Raja

  • AstroGuardian - Monday, February 1, 2010 - link

    Hello Raja and everyone:

    Would you be so kind and point me to a site or anything that has Intel and AMD chips compared? Live Lynnfield vs Clarkdale vs everything?

    I have been into hardware for a loooong time but i was doing some science work lately and i am out of grip with latest chips.

    Thanks everybody. This review was great
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