ECS Elitegroup P55H-A

The results comparing the ECS P55H-A to the Intel DP55KG are not exactly interesting with the performance being largely the same. The gaming performance in Nexuiz, World of Padman, and Unigine Tropics were all close, but when turning to PostMark the ECS Elitegroup motherboard was capable of offering a higher number of transactions per second in this mail-oriented real-world benchmark. The disk performance as measured through IOzone was the same with both the reads and writes.

To summarize the ECS Elitegroup P55H-A, this is a cost effective motherboard (only about $120 USD) that is CrossFire compatible (albeit with PCI-E x8 bandwidth), offers eSATA and Gigabit Ethernet connectivity, is compatible with the LGA-1156 Core i5 and Core i7 CPUs, and its Linux performance is comparable to that of the Intel DP55KG, which costs nearly twice as much at over $200. The ECS P55H-A had ran fine with Ubuntu 9.10 under our tests with the only complaint we were able to generate being the lack of LM_Sensors support for this new hardware, but we have yet to encounter a P55 motherboard that is supported by LM_Sensors in Ubuntu 9.10. This should be addressed with time. ECS also provides their eJIFFY Linux environment for this motherboard, but we do not believe many of our experienced Linux readers would be interested in this lightweight OS, but at least it may turn some Windows users to toying with a stripped-down form of Linux.

The ECS P55H-A can be found for $120 USD right now at NewEgg. If you do purchase this motherboard, we ask that you use the link above to help support our site. Overall, if you are looking for a low-cost P55 motherboard that does not cut back too many features, the P55H-A from Elitegroup Computer Systems should be on your short list.