ECS P67H2-A2

Examination:

The ECS P67H2-A2 is a standard ATX motherboard with a normal layout. However, there are two large heatsinks covering power circuitry near the CPU socket that is connected via two heat-pipes. This motherboard has four DDR3 DIMM sockets that support up to 32GB of system memory and can run up to DDR3-2133MHz speeds in its top overclock mode or in DDR3-1866/1600MHz configurations in its overclock modes, otherwise it handles DDR3-1333 at stock speeds. Between the DDR3 memory sockets and edge of the PCB is the 24-pin ATX power connector.

Moving south on the motherboard are the Serial ATA connectors. Rotated 90 degrees along the edge of the P67H2-A2 motherboard PCB are four Serial ATA 2.0 ports and two Serial ATA 3.0 ports. All of these SATA connections are provided by the Intel P67 chipset. The chipset itself is behind these SATA connections and is covered by a very small heatsink. On the top of the heatsink is a vanity plate that matches that of the PWM heatsinks near the CPU socket area. In this corner of the motherboard is also a POST LED display, front panel header, and USB 3.0 connections.

The expansion slots on the ECS P67H2-A2 motherboard include two PCI Express x16, two PCI, and one PCI Express x1 slot. The dual PCI Express x16 slots are compatible with NVIDIA SLI and AMD CrossFire. Between these two slots is the AMI BIOS chipset and CMOS battery, which makes room for being able to install a dual-slot graphics card without blocking any other expansion slots. At the bottom of the PCB are handy reset and power switches, which has fortunately started to become fairly standard among new motherboards.

While there are the two large PWM heatsinks above and behind the LGA-1155 CPU socket, it should not affect the installation of any after-market CPU heatsinks. This motherboard sports an eight=phase power design with VRD12 compliance. This motherboard supports all current Intel Sandy Bridge processors. The rear I/O ports on this motherboard include one PS/2 (either for keyboard or mouse), two USB 3.0, eight USB 2.0, two eSATA, two Gigabit Ethernet, five analog audio jacks, and one Optical S/PDIF output. Making this motherboard quite convenient for overclockers is a clear CMOS button that's also present from the rear I/O area rather than needing to open up the chassis when an overclock or other BIOS setting goes awry.