H57H-MUS (V1.0A) product gallery

The motherboard is equipped with four DIMM slots supporting dual-channel DDR3 memory up-to 1333 MHz JEDEC and then limited overclock speeds up-to 1600 MHz as standard from the BIOS. We see a count of six SATA-2 ports + you get two more with the SATA6G controller of course.

The layout is fine and everything is positioned in a fairly logical fashion. As you can see, the H57 PCH is cooled passively with a small heatsink. Next to the motherboard's ATX power connector we see a small button, press it and your CMOS is cleared, no need for jumpers any more.

At the lower right side of the motherboard we see front panel headers (not color coded), three USB 2.0 headers and actual proper reset and power buttons. Nice to see these buttons upgraded to something a little more mature.

From top to bottom, a x16 PCIe slot, a x1 slot, a x4 slot and a traditional PCI slot. This is very nice connectivity. Under the red x16 slot we see a diagnostic POST LED displaying error-codes and, once booted up into Windows, the processor temperature. We like it very much BUT it's positioned completely wrong... insert a dedicated graphics card and the display will get lost under the graphics card cooler. I sometimes wonder why ECS does not think about simple stuff like that in the design stages...

Underneath the passive grey heat sink the H57 PCH chip is located, responsible for the infrastructure of the motherboard and its components. The chip becomes lukewarm at best hence it does not need active cooling.

Big improvement, new quality capacitors and solid core chokes that catch the eye alright. It's good to see ECS take note of the current trend and improve on that.

So yes, overall a nice little motherboard alright. Very feature rich and versatile.