ECS P67H2-A motherboard review

Product Gallery

As you guys know by now the Intel's Sandy Bridge processors release requires a new motherboard chipset and a new CPU socket (LGA 1155).

ECS has released several H67 and P67 motherboards, the model shown today is making sure that both NVIDIA and AMD graphics cards work combined together. Yep, ECS is adding the somewhat unpopular Lucid Hydra (LT24102) IC. We won't deny it, we are not keen on the extra chip at all, as overall experiences with Hydra are far from impressive and let alone user friendly.

Manufacturers like to add features and differentiate themselves though, hence this somewhat controversial choice.

This ATX sized motherboard is to be called the P67H2-A and comes with a 14-phase VRM design. The motherboard comes with three PCI Express 2.0 x16 slots (x16, x8, x8 or x16,x16) as well as a pair of PCI Express x1 and two PCI slots.

The motherboard has a lot connectivity on the rear IO panel. Dual Gigabit Ethernet, multiple NEC USB 3.0 connectors that will bring you a total of four USB 3.0 ports, next to the six USB 2.0 ports. Optical TOSLINK S/PDIF audio for eight-channel audio, CMOS clear button, two eSATA connectors yeah that's tucked full alright.