Bundle

H57H-MUS comes in a medium-sized box bundled with the standard cables and user manuals as well as USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gbps adapters (described below) and an eSATA cable (not a frequent addition). SATA cable connectors are rectangular for your convenience.

We have already mentioned one proprietary software utility. ECS offers two more: eBLU BIOS firmware updater and eDLU drivers updater. And, of course, there's eJIFFY, a Linux-based mini-OS distribution. Although the latter yields to the multitude of other existing distributions optimized for all sorts of purposes. It's even inferior to competing solutions, e.g. from ASUS (a mini-OS built into into an onboard flash memory chip on high-end solutions for instant boot capability) or MSI (a mini-OS that works right from the supplied DVD).

Features

The set of interfaces on the backpanel is very nice. There are 3 video outputs: VGA (D-sub), DVI-D and HDMI. This should please the absolute majority of people who will use integrated graphics of Intel CPUs. Audio can also be output in 3 ways: via analog connectors, via an optical S/PDIF (Toslink) and HDMI. Other interfaces include 8 USB ports, 2 LAN connectors and an eSATA interface. Formally, a high-end solution should also have FireWire, but you have to admit its popularity is diminishing.

ECS H57H-MUS is based on the Intel H57 chipset (H57 PCH). The auxillary controllers are listed below.

• Integrated audio based on the 8-channel (7.1+2) Realtek ALC892 HDA codec, optical S/PDIF-Out (Toslink) on the backpanel.
• 2 Gigabit Ethernet based on Realtek 8111DL (PCIe x1) with teaming.
• eSATA-II based on JMicron JMB360 (PCIe x1), 1 eSATA port on the backpanel.

As you can see, the number of auxillary controllers is almost minimal, probably except for the dual LAN. There are no third or fourth SATA RAID controllers, since the built-in SATA controller supports RAID anyway.

But let's not forget about SATA 6Gbps and USB 3.0. Strangely enough, ECS didn't provide any onboard controllers or ports (due to the lack of space maybe?). Instead, both controllers are PCIe x1 cards based on the standard NEC µD720200F1 and Marvell 88SE9128 chips with two ports per each. Note that there are only three suitable slots for these two controllers: x1, x4 and x16. The x16 one can actually remain free, because the motherboard supports graphics built into Clarkdale CPUs. However, as we all know, performance may be severely limited by slower interfaces. As only the PCIe x16 slot meets the PCIe 2.0 requirements, only it can provide the full performance to either controller. The other one will always be limited by PCIe 1.1. And this is the best scenario. In the worst case, the performance of both "high-speed" controllers will be limited.

We already saw this on ASRock P55 Deluxe and, naturally, the SATA 6Gbps controller worked much slower when connected to PCIe 1.1. Today's solution is no different. We checked this with a Kingston SSDNow SNE125-S2/32GB SSD.

Could they have come up with a different implementation? Of course they could. For example, ASUS combined both controllers on a single PCIe x4 board. And ECS H57H-MUS does have a PCIe x4 slot! Such a controller wouldn't break records due to the same limitations of the PCI Express 1.1 interface, but at least it would've freed another slot. Installed into the PCIe x16 slot, both controllers would've worked at full speed. Sadly, the only advantage of the solution provided by ECS is flexibility. And that you can just give the controller you don't need to a friend.

We tested the integrated audio solution in the 16-bit/44kHz and 16-bit/48kHz modes using RightMark Audio Analyzer 6.0 and a Terratec DMX 6fire sound card.

We couldn't run the test to check the analog output in the standard mode, because the output signal was too distorted. The results you can see above were obtained with the minimal possible volume and the maximal amplification of the input signal on Terratec DMX 6fire. But that's not a mode you would use on a daily basis.

Conclusions

ECS H57H-MUS seems too expensive for a simple and efficient HTPC. It's more aimed at users willing to overclock processors (although it offers moderate capabilities in that department) and connect various peripheral devices and such. In other words, at enthusiasts. However, the very inconvenient implementation of USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gbps makes these interfaces hardly useful.

The motherboard provided by the manufacturer.

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