ECS P67H2-A2 Intel 1155 Preview

[cadaveca]

ECS is jumping on the Sandybridge bandwagon, offering a P67 based mainboard aimed at the gamer with a cool look and the Black series branding. We check out the board to show you what you can expect to get out of the box.

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[bear jesus]

I love the style and colour scheme of the newer ECS boards and the inclusion of the usb caps i find very interesting, to be honest i would not mind some of them and ones for a few other ports that are never used to stop them filling up with dust.

But is there missing components here?

If so any ideas why they are missing?

I also love the extra reinforcement/padding as with coolers these days most boards need as much help as possible supporting them, i was always scared of what my ninja scythe full copper with 2 fans (about 1300g)would do to my board if it was knocked too hard

 

[cadaveca]

Usually those caps serve to smooth out voltage fluctuations, but with a good PWM, i can see how they are not needed. Of course, this was just a preview, not a full review, so to know whether this has any effect will have to wait for the actual review.

As many boards either have "missing" components in either the socket itself, or underneath, like in that picture, I do not see it as a potential issue.

I really like the color scheme too; nothing seems "over-done", and given the cost, it does appear to have alot of potential.

The re-inforcement pads are definitely nice.

 

[bear jesus]

As they are just capacitors i would hope/assume they would not have any noticeable effect in testing although it makes me wonder if lacking all those components has broken the circuit to anything, has the board been set up and powered on yet?

One other thing about the looks, i love the fact all the capacitors have red markings on them, often they are a mix of blue and red but being only red looks very neat/tidy to me and kind of gives a very subdued hint of color to the board.

I look forward to the full review.

 

[overclocking101]

no overclocking section?? come on dave show us what that ecs board can do! ECS looks to be coming up since the 775 days, almost tempted to try an ecs board.

 

[sneekypeet]

no overclocking section?? come on dave show us what that ecs board can do! ECS looks to be coming up since the 775 days, almost tempted to try an ecs board.

I didn't see any shots with a CPU in there, did you?

 

[DannibusX]

Keyword: Preview.

 

[PhysXerror]

Why Is the digit display sideways??

 

[t77snapshot]

The back panel itself has everything needed, including a Clear CMOS switch, handy when overclocking, as you don't need to get inside to the case to reset the BIOS when things are pushed too far.

I love that more boards are making this instead CMOS switch available! Resetting the battery behind my graphics card when overclocking gets annoying really quickly.

 

[Deleted member 67555]

Thanks for Doing an ECS preview...Hopefully the review will show how good ECS actually is....Ive been saying for some time that ECS is not what people think it is anymore....They make very high quality boards normally at a very good price

 

[GSquadron]

This time i admit it... you got a hand from wizzard
Great review, only i was expecting a number of valuation

 

[Mescalamba]

What everyone has with that UEFI? Sure, its improvement, but man .. we lived like 20 years with original BIOS, so I think we can tolerate that in lower priced/lower specs mobos further, yea?

And anyway, I kinda like those blue screens (not BSOD).

 

[cadaveca]

The big thing, for me, is UEFI allows booting from drives greater than 3TB. Although at this point, I cannot think of any >3TB drives, it's something that WILL come in the future, and as such, is important to ensure full compatibility with future devices.

Plus, I really like being able to use a mouse in BIOS, as well as all the other nifty stuff that comes along with that...monitoring tools, new GUIs...UEFI is something I personally have been waiting for for quite some time.

 

[brandonwh64]

So cadaveca, bioses have finally evolved to a nicer GUI system

 

[ZeppMan217]

Oh, so it was a preview! Damn, I wish it had a huge shining neon sign saying "Preview here, reviews there".

 

[MadMan007]

Without these Marvell controllers, the SATA 6.0 Gbps connections would not be possible, as Intel has yet to update their chipsets to natively support SATA 3.0.

I could have sworn the SB chipsets have 2 Sata III/6.0Gbps ports?

 

[cadaveca]

I could have sworn the SB chipsets have 2 Sata III/6.0Gbps ports?

Yes, this board supports 4x SATA III 6Gbps, the extra 2 are provided via an external controller, by the Marvell controller on this board, seen here:

the board also DOES have an UEFI bios, provided by AMI, and the retail pricing(via NewEgg) is $194.99, not $149.99. the review has been updated to reflect this.