ECS P67H2-A2 - Features

Back in 2009 when we included the P55H-A Black Series in our P55 roundup it was one of simply two ECS P55 motherboards available at the fourth dimension and at $120 it was the cheapest board featured in the roundup.

Despite its price tag, it didn't deliver much value because the Asrock P55 Extreme provided considerably more features and amend overclocking performance for merely a fraction more money. This fourth dimension round ECS has been a little more prudent when naming their Black Series boards as the P67H2-A2 looks to be a proper high-end motherboard that should concord its own.

While the ECS P55H-A Blackness Edition provided little more than than a CPU socket and chipset, the P67H2-A2 Blackness Edition has quite an extensive list of features including half-dozen SATA 6Gb/s ports, USB 3.0, dual Gigabit LAN and 8-channel audio.

ECS is as well pushing a few other interesting features with the P67H2-A2 such every bit the 15u gilt contact socket design which they say provides 3x extra protection, temperature resistant and scrape protection to ensure motherboards longest lifespan, better reliability and fantabulous contact.

The idea behind this is that overclockers and even some gamers frequently mess around with their hardware, meaning they remove and re-install components such as the CPU numerous times. Doing and so tin can wear downwards the 1155 pins that connect to the CPU which inevitably causes problems. While this is an interesting feature, we can't say we've ever had this problem and few people would install CPUs on the same boards more than we do.

Apart from the standard P67 chipset features, Asrock has added quite a lot to the P67 Extreme6. Whereas all P67 motherboards volition characteristic vi SATA 3Gb/southward ports (two can work at 6Gb/s speeds) ECS has expanded the storage capabilities of their P67H2-A2 by including two Marvell 88SE9128 controllers.

These controllers support a pair of 6Gb/south SATA ports each using a PCI Express ii.0 x1 (5.0Gb/s) lane. The Marvell controllers back up NCQ (Native Command Queuing) and hardware RAID 0, i, 5 and 10. Yet just two of the 4 ports are attainable to internal drives while the other two provide eSATA support at the rear. All the same the inclusion of these Marvell controllers means that the ECS P67H2-A2 features a grand total of eight SATA ports, half dozen onboard and ii at the rear.

ECS has likewise expanded the networking capabilities of the P67H2-A2 by including two Gigabit Ethernet controllers. The dual Realtek RTL8111E controllers each utilize a PCI Express 1.1 x1 (two.0Gb/s) lane and support a wide range of features such equally Wake-On-LAN, LAN Cable Detection, Energy Efficient Ethernet 802.3az and Teaming.

Likewise requiring a PCI Express lane or in this case lanes are two Etron EJ168A controllers providing two USB three.0 ports. Each controller uses a PCI Express 2.0 x1 (5.0Gb/s) lane and supports two USB 1.0/2.0/three.0 devices. While i of these controllers is used to provide four rear USB three.0 ports the other supports a pair of front mounted ports using an onboard header which is included in the parcel.

We plant that the eight-channel sound is delivered past a rather traditional choice in the Realtek ALC892 codec which supports THX TruStudio Pro. Over again this is the same audio codec used by the Asrock P67 Extreme6 and while there is little information available we know it to be a popular codec amongst motherboard manufacturers.