The Board - A Closer Look

The board's bottom edge carries a full compliment of pin headers for everything from front panel audio to front panel USB, and ECS has also had the foresight to include several onboard switches; a Power and a Reset Button are both close to the lowest PCI slot, as is a fan connector and COM port header.


Moving over to the southbridge side of the board, we find numerous USB headers, including a large grey USB 3.0 header, a secondary Clear CMOS header, and the front panel connector here rounds things out. Just above the Front Panel connector sits the Advanced Dual Display Indicator, a dual-digit display which functions as a POST code display, useful when troubleshooting boot issues. The manual includes a full listing explaining the codes the display shows during the boot-up process. The dual nature of the display means it serves to report system temperature after the system has passed the POST test.

You can also see the SATA headers next to the POST display. ECS has conveniently colored both sets of SATA connectors so users can tell whether they are connecting to the P67 I/O hub, or the Marvell SATA 3.0 chipset.


There are two Ethernet controllers included with the P67H2-A2, both supplied by Realtek. We had to remove the PWM cooling to find the LAN2 chip, but that was easy to locate, as the entire board is very well labelled, so there is no mistaking one thing for another. The LAN ports are capable of teaming functions, sharing network load over both connections.


We were very surprised to find not just one, but TWO Marvell RAID controllers! There is one at the front, above onboard speaker for additional internal SATA 3.0 connectors, and another at the rear to control the two eSATA connectors found on the backplate. 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 more than 2 SATA 3.0 connections. The aforementioned speaker was a surprise as well, no more fumbling with a speaker on the end of a couple of wires to hear POST beeps!


The board's BIOS ROM is located just below the onboard speaker, and to our dismay, is not fitted into a socket, but soldered directly to the motherboard itself. This may prove to not be an issue, but as reviewers tend to push memory to the max quite often, BIOS corruption is something very familiar, and should such things happen, the entire board must be sent in for repair, rather than just a little ROM being replaced.

ECS might confuse some by having a sticker over the Super I/O chip denoting BIOS type, but not us. With the sticker quickly removed, it was easy to identify this chip, the ITE IT8728F. The ITE IT8728F Super I/O supports additional fan control and voltage monitoring features not supported elsewhere by other components, and is also responsible for providing the connectivity for the PS/2 keyboard/mouse port.


The P67H2-A2 features USB 3.0 support via two seperate Etron EJ168 controllers; one for front panel connectors, and the other for the backplate USB 3.0 connectors. ECS intends users to make use of the grey pin block to access one set of USB 3.0 jacks, and the included front panel bracket with the USB 3.0 ports ensures that even users whose cases do not offer USB 3.0 will still be able to make use of them.


The included Realtek ALC892 HD codec supports 7.1+2 audio, and meets Microsoft's WLP3.x audio requirements. Using DACs that output a 97 db SNR, and ADCs with a 90 db SNR, it supports 44.1k/48k/96k/192 kHz sampling at 16-, 20- and 24-bit, including full support for HD audio formats featuring Content Protection, providing supporting software is used. It is also DirectSound 3D compatible, so no area of usage or functionality is overlooked.


The final two components are the ITE PCI-E to PCI bridge that supports the dual PCI slots at the bottom of the board, and the Intersil ISL6364 controller. Although not a lot of information is to be found online about the ISL6364, our experience says that it is responsible for controlling the board's CPU power phases, and the current they provide. This same chip is found on many P67 motherboards released in the past day or so, therefore while information is hard to come by, clearly this is nothing other than a controller designed with the Socket 1155, and Intel's VRD12.0 power specification in mind.


The final items are the board cooling, both for the CPU power area, and the board's P67 chipset. The MOSFET heatsink is composed of two seperate large elements connected via two heatpipes, to help prevent hotspots around the socket. While quite tall in stature, its size ensures that adequate cooling is provided in even the most unfriendly environments. The same can be said of the Southbridge heatsink, with many fins to increase overall surface area, it's more than capable of cooling the chipset, even when hidden from direct airflow by installed expansion cards.