ECS H55H-I Motherboard

Memory Support

Socket LGA1156 CPUs, like socket LGA1366 and AMD processors, have an embedded memory controller. All other Intel CPUs use an external memory controller, which is located on the north bridge chip (a.k.a. MCH or Memory Controller Hub) from the chipset. This means that with other Intel CPUs the chipset (and thus the motherboard) is the component that says what memory technologies and the maximum amount of memory you can have on your PC.

Since now the memory controller is inside the CPU, it is the processor, and not the chipset, that defines the memory technologies and the maximum amount of memory you can have. The motherboard, however, may have a limitation as to how much memory can be installed.

At the moment, the integrated memory controller of socket LGA1156 processors supports only DDR3 memories up to 1,333 MHz under dual-channel architecture.

ECS H55H-I has only two DDR3-DIMM sockets, so you can have up to 8 GB, if you use two 4 GB modules. Having only two memory sockets isn’t a real drawback due to the motherboard reduced size.

The two sockets are orange and you must use two memory modules in order to enable dual channel feature and thus be able to use the maximum performance you system is capable to provide.

Figure 3: Memory sockets. Install two modules for the best performance.