ECS H57H-MUS Black Series

Conclusion:

As would be expected, the overall Linux performance of the ECS H55H-M and H57H-MUS motherboards were close to the same. Only with the OpenArena gaming test was there any dramatic difference in performance, with the frame-rate for the Intel HD graphics integrated into the Intel Core i3 CPU being lower with the H57 motherboard, which may be due to a Linux driver bug or another issue, but when carrying out other ioquake3-based game tests the frame-rate delta was indifferent, which alleviated our concerns.

The ECS H57H-MUS motherboard is nice and boasts all of the common Intel H57 features while it also offers up a few extras like USB 3.0 and Serial ATA Gb/s. However, to some disappointment, the upgraded USB and SATA capabilities are found on add-in PCI Express add-in cards rather than being integrated onto the micro-ATX motherboard itself. At the end of the day, the ECS H57H-MUS is a nice motherboard that's on par with other H55/H57 motherboards and is priced very competitively at just around $170 USD (at Amazon.com), offers a compelling set of features, and should work just fine with a modern Linux distribution.