Choosing the Best H55/H57 Motherboard - Part 1

ASUS P7H55D-M EVO

The ASUS P7H55D-M EVO is currently priced at $135 at Newegg.

The P7H55D-M EVO package contents include: two SATA cables, one UDMA cable, User Guide, one Q-Connector, Driver/software DVD, and I/O Shield. That's a little light on SATA cables for our liking; a couple of extra would have been nice, as would the inclusion of a USB bracket to make use of the internal headers.

On the hardware front you get standard Realtek ALC889 audio, Realtek 8112L PCI-E LAN, two 1394 ports (VIA VT6308P), and two USB 3.0 ports thanks to the inclusion of NEC's controller chip. Unlike MSI and ASRock you don't get a TPM header; we're not sure what the uptake for this technology is right now, but it's something to bear in mind if you have plans to make use of it in the future.

Software

ASUS's driver DVD comes bundled with a slew of tools: PC Probe for software/temp monitoring, AI Suite/Fan Expert for setting up fan profiles, Express Gate for a quick-boot Linux environment, and Turbo-V for overclocking.

Turbo-V is a simple OS-based tool that allows on-the-fly changes to bus speeds and voltages, as well as offering the option to save profiles. A GPU level driver is also included, which allows for overclocking the IGP within the OS. We found the supplied version of Turbo-V to be fully functional with our 661 Clarkdale in testing. Out of the three vendors on test here today, ASUS seems to have come the closest to getting things working right first time.

The Board

Slot layout on the P7H55D-M EVO is good, although there's only one full length PCI-E x16 slot limiting upgrade options for add-in RAID cards if you go with a discrete GPU. Instead, ASUS offers two PCI-E x1 slots, with one placed to be accessible regardless of slot loading. The IDE port could have been left out, although you still get six accessible SATA ports at the lower right corner for the board in spite of its presence.

Three onboard fan headers are on offer. Fan control is not very comprehensive for the power and chassis fan headers; you get a three-step control, which can be applied to ramp dynamically via software profiles. You don't get any onboard power buttons either, barring Mem-OK, which acts as a solution to most non-boot situations related to overclocking.

Onboard cooling is more than adequate to take care of most overclocking. If you do overclock your Clarkdale CPU over 4GHz, some air cross-flow over the PWM heatsinks will keep them cool enough under normal usage. Heatsink height is low, so the board caters for a variety of CPU cooler installations without orientation issues - unless you install memory modules with very tall heat spreaders in the primary DIMM slots, which can make things a little tight for fan placement.

Overclocking

4GB memory overclocking is not class leading; use the 2:10 memory ratio and you'll find you're limited to around 175 BCLK (DDR3-1750). The alternative is to stick with 2:8 (DDR3-1600MHZ) at around 200 BCLK with a CAS of 6 or 7, modules permitting. The bonus to this configuration is you get to keep a reasonable QPI multiplier ratio, thus delivering reasonable performance.

Moving up to 8GB, you're looking at being capped at DDR3-1550~1580 unless you relax the QPI multiplier ratio, which does not really make sense from a performance standpoint. Real world differences are of course small either way, but we aim to take whatever we can get from the chipset.

BIOS

BIOS 0701 is the comprehensive functionality and overclocking release from ASUS. You get the full array of DRAM timing options included from tRD register manipulation to fine control of voltage rails. DRAM timing adjustments are easy to make because the BIOS shows you every setting value when you select AUTO mode for the timings, giving you a base to work from. You can change one setting at a time while leaving all others on AUTO and it's simple to change something back if things go wrong. MSI would do well to learn something from this approach.

Voltage adjustments can be made easily too; you can type the voltage value in directly and the board will select the nearest offset. The ranges are quite granular so there's plenty of room for fine-tuning.

There are eight BIOS save locations available for profiles, which come in handy during initial setup or overclocking adventures. A built-in BIOS flashing routine is also provided, allowing easy updates from a USB pen drive or from a HDD.