Bundle and software

The bundle seems like a compromise between company's desire to prove motherboard's high-end status and an urge to save on accessories. Still, P67H2-A2 comes with a couple of interesting things in addition to the standard user manual, software DVD, backpanel faceplate, SLI bridge and SATA cables. One such bonus accessory is a set of USB port caps. Frankly speaking, I can't remember if I have ever seen these before. As you understand, the caps are hardly useful, but hey it's a bonus.

The second extra accessory is much more useful: it's 3.5" front-panel module for two USB 3.0 ports. Stylish black cover, good shielded cable — a nice solution, if your PC enclosure isn't bundled with something similar. Moreover, if you need these two USB 3.0 ports on the backpanel instead, this can also be done easily. An affordable, simple, universal, and very nice solution.

Let's say a few words about bundled software. Since recently, ECS has been offering a proprietory monitoring and overclocking tool dubbed eOC. While not incredible, it gets the job done and allows you to find stable clock rates with no need to reboot and enter BIOS.

The company also provides you with two simple upgrade-over-Internet tools — eBLU (BIOS) and eDLU (drivers). There's also eJIFFY — a Linux-based mini-OS distribution that can be installed on a hard drive for 'quicker bootup'. Fortunately, it seems this whole trend is becoming a thing of the past, but you can read about this rather uninteresting solution in our previous reviews of ECS motherboards.

Finally, let's mention a couple of new utilities: eGS and eSF. Easy Green Saver (eGS) is another attempt to follow the 'environment protection' fashion. It can lower CPU clock rate when it's under light load and also provides access to system power-saving parameters like disabling monitor and hard drives after a period of inactivity. There are no reasons to use it.

On the contrary, the second program dubbed Smart Fan Utility (eSF) is a very nice tool to control CPU fan speed. Aside from ready presets, eSF offers fully manual controls similar to those of ASUS Fan Xpert which has been the best so far. Highly recommended.

Features

The backpanel looks quite typical except for the Clear CMOS which is still a rare feature. The two USB 3.0 ports don't reduce the number of available USB 2.0 ones (8) which is good. (And don't forge those two extra USB 3.0 ports I mentioned above.) Also there are two Gigabit Ethernet interfaces and two eSATA 6Gbps ports. The remaining connectors are standard.

ECS P67H2-A2 is based on the Intel P67 PCH and has controllers listed below.

• 2 x USB 3.0 based on EtronTech EJ168 (PCIe x1), each supports two devices.
• 2 x SATA 6Gbps based on Marvell 88SE9128 (PCIe x1), supporting 2 x SATA 6Gbps and 2 x eSATA 6Gbps as well as RAID 0, 1, 5, 10.
• Integrated audio based on the 7.1+2-channel Realtek ALC892 HDA codec. An optical (Toslink) S/PDIF-Out on the backpanel and an S/PDIF-Out on the PCB.
• 2 x Gigabit Ethernet based on Realtek RTL8111E (PCIe x1), supporting teaming.
• PCI based on ITE IT8893E PCIe-PCI bridge. Supports two onboard slots.

As you can see, the motherboard offers almost everything you may need these days, including the large number of SATA ports. Note the unusual ITE bridge, but who says other bridges are standard. A similar solution is used in Gigabyte P67A-UD5, by the way, and both perform flawlessly.

You may also note that the USB 3.0 controller isn't made by NEC. We'll probably compare performance of these in future articles, because today, NEC/Renesas µPD720200 is a well-examined de facto standard.

By the way, the complete list of peripheral controllers gives you an idea why there are so few expansion slots. There are just no free PCIe lanes left (7 controllers + 1 x PCIe x1 slot). Well, perhaps replacing one Gigabit Ethernet controller with an extra PCIe x1 slot would've been more reasonable for most people.

The digital S/PDIF-Out supports both 44.1 and 48 kHz sampling rates. The used audio codec doesn't offer any interesting surround sound technologies, so we'll just test its analog outputs in the 16-bit/44kHz and 16-bit/48kHz modes with RightMark Audio Analyzer 6.0 and Terratec DMX 6fire.

Conclusions

ECS P67H2-A2 is a decent motherboard without any special peculiarities. This isn't bad, because most people do not need those anyway. Not all features are reasonable though. For example, they could've saved on heatpipes and add an extra expansion slot, or replace one of the auxillary SATA controllers with, say, FireWire.

What we liked: mostly convenient layout and a few nice design touches, good cooling, interesting and useful bundle and software, sufficient (if not excessive) functionality. What we didn't like: just five expansion slots (and a chance that a graphics card will prevent access to another one). Other downsides are sort of secondary: they could've improved CPU/memory power circuitry, changed peripheral controllers, provided more advanced software. But since this motherboard doesn't seem very widespread, watch its price — it might be attractive and might justify possible drawbacks.

The motherboard was provided by its manufacturer.

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