ECS however has been growing steadily in the retail market, and especially the Black series motherboards started to make a difference a year or two ago. But still, we always stumble into something that leaves room for improvement adn ECS always listnen. With next years chipset I tell you, ECS will become an even more important player into the market as the upcoming lineup looks fantastic.

On the short term though (end of June) they will be launching the P55H-AK motherboard. This motherboards supports full speed SLI and Crossfire by way of the included NVIDIA NF200 chipset that provides additional PCI Express lanes, up-to 3-way SLI will be supported in a 16:8:8 PCIe lanes configuration. Adding to the gaming side, ECS also uses the Realtek ALC899 chip for audio and that's then tied into a Creative Labs suite somehow, as the board supports a new feature called Sound Blaster X-Fi MB2 -- opening up EAX and the Creative software suite.

On this motherboard ECS added not one, but two NEC USB 3.0 controllers providing four USB 3.0 ports – two on the back I/O panel and included is a cable that allows two USB 3.0 ports to be added.There is also not only one, but two SATA 6G controllers providing two onboard SATA 6G ports and two eSATA capable SATA 6G ports on the back I/O panel. Some of the other features and specs are listed in the image below.

Have a look at some of the photo's, this motherboard has a lot in store alright on the P55 /LGA1156 platform. BTW we also noticed an added PLX chip for additional bandwidth to support the two NEC and two Marvell SATA 6G controllers. We expect this motherboard to etail at 225 ~ 250 USD.