ECS P55H-AK Motherboard

On-Board Peripherals

The Intel P55 chipset is a single-chip solution. The basic features provided by this chipset include six SATA-300 ports (RAID support is optional), no support for parallel ATA (PATA) ports, 14 USB 2.0 ports supporting port disable, an embedded Gigabit Ethernet MAC (Medium Access Control), and eight x1 PCI Express lanes. As explained, this motherboard has a PLX PEX8608 chip that adds another eight  PCI Express x1 2.0 lanes and an NVIDIA NF200 chip that adds 32 PCI Express x1 1.0 lanes.

The ECS P55H-AK provides all six SATA-300 ports with support for Intel Matrix Storage, which provides RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10 (these ports are white). This motherboard comes with two SATA-600 ports (a.k.a. SATA 6G), controlled by a Marvell 88SE9128 chip that provides support for RAID 0 and 1. Here we couldn’t understand why ECS used the opposite color standard that is being used by all other manufacturers. On all other motherboards we’ve seen so far, the SATA-600 ports are white, and the SATA-300 ports use a color that is different from white, usually black or blue.

The portrayed motherboard also has two eSATA-600 ports, controlled by another Marvell 88SE9128.

All SATA ports are placed on the motherboard edge rotated 90°, so video cards won’t block them.

Figure 4: SATA ports

No ATA-133 port or floppy disk drive controller are present.

From the 14 USB 2.0 ports supported by the chipset, the P55H-AK offers 12 of them, eight soldered on the rear panel and four available through two motherboard headers.

One of the highlights of this motherboard is the presence of four USB 3.0 ports, controlled by two NEC μPD720200 chips. Two of these ports are available on the rear panel of the product and painted blue. The other two ports are available through a USB 3.0 header on the motherboard, and the P55H-AK comes with a nice aluminum-made adapter for you to install
these ports on the front panel of your case, using a 3.5” external bay. The product also comes with a bracket for you to install these two USB 3.0 ports at an available expansion slot, which is a nice option to have.

Figure 5: USB 3.0 adapter

No FireWire port is available.

Audio is generated by the chipset using a Realtek ALC889 codec, which provides professional-grade audio to this motherboard, with eight channels, 24-bit resolution, a sampling rate of up to 192 kHz for both inputs and outputs, 104 dB signal-to-noise ratio for the analog inputs, and 108 dB signal-to-noise ratio for the outputs. With a high signal-to-noise ratio like this you can work professionally, converting, mixing, and editing audio from an analog source (e.g., converting VHS tapes and vinyl records to the digital format) with no background noise (white noise). This motherboard comes with an on-board optical SPDIF output. The board also has an SPDIF-out header (labeled “SPDIFO”), which can be used to add a coaxial SPDIF port (through an adapter that doesn’t come with the product) or to route sound to the video card HDMI output in order for you to have an HDMI output with digital audio on a single connector.

This motherboard uses shared 7.1 analog audio outputs, but independent 5.1 analog audio outputs, meaning that you can have a six-channel analog speaker set without killing the line in or the mic in jacks, but if you install an eight-channel analog speaker set you will have to kill one of these jacks in order to use it.

The ECS P55H-AK has two Gigabit Ethernet ports, each one controlled by one Realtek RTL8111E chip, which are connected to the system using PCI Express x1 lanes, and thus not presenting any potential performance issues.

In Figure 6, you can see the motherboard rear panel with a clear CMOS button, a shared PS/2 mouse/keyboard connector, eight USB 2.0 ports, two eSATA-600 ports, two Gigabit Ethernet ports, two USB 3.0 ports (blue), shared 7.1 analog audio connectors, and an optical SPDIF output.

Figure 6: Motherboard rear panel

This motherboard comes with a  POST diagnostics display, which tells you through a two-digit code what is wrong when you computer doesn’t turn on.

Figure 7: POST display

There are other smaller features. For example, this motherboard comes with an operating system stored inside the motherboard read-only memory that allows you to access the Internet without needing to load the operating system or even without having a hard disk drive installed. This feature, called eJiffy, is identical in concept to the Express Gate feature available on motherboards from ASUS and the Winki feature present on motherboards from MSI.