Intel S1155 by stefan @ 2011-02-23
The H67H2-M Black motherboard from ECS is the most equipped from their H67 chipset series and incorporates technologies like USB 3.0, EZ Charger and Dual Gigabit LAN with teaming support. The board supports only Intel HD Graphics overclocking, the CPU overclocking by multiplier is locked and the memory frequency is limited at 1333MHz.
At first I would like to thank ECS for offering me the chance of testing one of their latest products: the H67H2-M motherboard.
"ECS, the Elitegroup Computer Systems, was established in 1987, and is approaching its 23rd year of business. More than two decades, ECS has overcome a great deal of obstacles facing new businesses and has experienced the joy of significant growth and development. Her main focus has expanded to not only motherboards, but also desktop and notebook computers, graphics cards and other mobile products. ECS is strongly committed to develop cutting-edge technology in order to generate innovative products under environmental friendly designs. ECS comprehensive system of quality control provides our clients with reassurance and fosters long term cooperation.
Green Touch, Good Life
ECS commits to protect the Earth by reducing the global environmental loading as the priority of her corporate sustainable strategy. Confronting more and more global environmental impacts; climate change, natural resources depletion and the crisis of ecological imbalance, ECS devotes the Green Solutions for the Earth sustainable development without compromising customer satisfaction. ECS expects bringing people with more Green Touch for a Good Life.
Starting from 2006, ECS has been implementing the “ECS Green Competitive Advantage and Quality Plan” and introduced Green Products through 4-stages of non-toxic management; including non-toxic suppliers, non-toxic material, non-toxic manufacturing & processing, and, non-toxic quality controls. Besides, ECS is recognized under the IECQQC080000 Certification in her two major manufacturing sites in China; Golden Elite Technology at Shenzhen and ESZ at Suzhou. That empowers ECS desire of providing end users with HSF (Hazardous Substance Free) products to ensure a quality green life.
As a top-down decision, ECS dedicates to offering clean and environmentally friendly computer products for consumers through product design, purchase, production, sale and services to the 3R environmental objectives – Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. The ECS engineering teams are engaged to create products under a Green concept by size reduction, product longevity, easy disassembly, recycle potential, substance restriction and energy saving. For example, ECS green motherboards apply to the three environmental directives – the WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment) promoted by the European Union; RoHS (Restriction on Hazardous Substance Directive) and EuP (Eco design of Energy-using Products Directive).
Nowadays, ECS integrates Green concept in her daily operation. From the headquarters on Taiwan to worldwide branches, ECS practices energy saving, water recycling, Green data center, planting and so on to reduce greenhouse gas emission for mitigating the climate change. With continuous efforts to conduct business in a sustainable way, ECS recognizes that we are dependent on the Earth and strive to improve the quality of life for people everywhere!
Global Network
The headquarters of ECS is located in Taipei Neihu Technology Park. We have offices in major cities around the world. We are committed to product development and expanding the scale of our business. With our branches all over the Americas, Europe, and Asia, ECS localizes sales and retail in order to provide immediate and convenient service for our customers.
-Taipei, Taiwan
-Tokyo, Japan
-Seoul, Korea
-Wijchen, Netherlands
-Fremont, USA
-Moscow, Russia
-Sao Paulo, Brazil
Manufacturing Sites
ECS adopts a vertical integration structure of design, component manufacturing, and system assembly. At present, ECS has established two manufacturing locations; well-developed supply chain capabilities, and well-monitored production links; and the capacity to adapt to the needs of the ever-changing market.
-Golden Elite Technology (Shenzhen), China
-ESZ (Suzhou), China"
The H67H2-M Black motherboard from ECS is shipped inside a small size cardboard box, with a lot of logos and other drawings all over; on the front we can see several pictograms representing the main product features, along with some included applications:
On one of the sides, we can see a small white sticker with the product serial numbers and onboard components:
On the bottom side, we can find some more information regarding the motherboard and its components, in multiple languages:
The interior of the box is split in two layers: the top layer holds the documentation, accessories and on the bottom one we can find the board itself:
Besides the User's Guide, we can also find in the box a general assembly manual that shows us how to set up a computer in small steps, two SATA cables and one eSATA bracket, along with the I/O shield (the retail package should also contain a CD with drivers and applications):
The motherboard does also come with plastic protective covers, that can be installed on the unused connectors, to avoid dust accumulation inside them and inside the case:
The product is wrapped inside an anti-static bag:
Even if this motherboard has a small form factor, ECS did not omit to introduce some of the features like USB 3.0 or a solid and cool looking cooling system; the board comes only with a PCI-Express x16 2.0 slot, two PCI-Express x1 slots and one PCI:
On the left side of the PCB, we can find two Realtek Gigabit LAN controllers (one which can be found under the VRM heatsink):
The EtronTech USB 3.0 controller is also found on the left side of the board:
This motherboard comes with an 8-channel audio solution, powered by the Realtek ALC892 CODEC:
The ITE IT8893 PCI Bridge, supports the bottom PCI expansion slot; the inclusion of this slot is very welcome because there are many of us with good sound cards or other devices that are using the old PCI interface:
Near the status-code LCD display, we can find the ITE SuperIO Sensor:
On the bottom, we can find lots of other headers/connectors or buttons (from left to right):
-Front Panel audio header
-SPDIF-out header
-System Fan connector
-Clear CMOS jumper
-Trusted Platform Module header
-ME unlock header
-Case Open header
-Front Panel USB headers (F_USB1 Gray one is for EZ Charger)
-Power and Reset buttons
-Front Panel Switch/LED header
The buzzer is integrated on the PCB and is placed right in the back of the SATA ports:
In the same area we can find the P67 chipset heatsink, which is fixed on the board with plastic push-pins and maintains the same design as the rest of the cooling system:
The CMOS battery can be found right under the PCI-Express x16 slot:
On the right side of the PCB, we can find the SATA ports (3 white SATA2 and 2 grey SATA3):
Between the ATX 24-pin power connector and the memory slots, we can locate another fan header:
The RAM slots are color coded, so we can identify the channels with ease:
The 4-pin CPU fan connector is right between the RAM slots and the VRM heatsink, on the top side of the board:
Also on the top, we can find the CPU 8-pin power connector:
The VRM cooling solution is linked with two heatpipes and the two heatsinks have a similar design:
The motherboard comes with the following ports on the I/O:
-VGA port
-DVI port
-Clear CMOS button
-DisplayPort
-HDMI port
-eSATA port
-4xUSB 2.0 ports
-2xUSB 3.0 ports
-4xRJ45 LAN ports
-Audio ports
ECS has equipped this motherboard with an Aptio BIOS firmware (based on the UEFI Specifications and the Intel® Platform Innovation Framework for EFI). In the Main section, we are able to set the language of the interface or set the date/time:
The Advanced BIOS tab allows us to change settings for the CPU and other systems:
In the LAN configuration sub-menu, we can enable or disable the two LAN controllers:
The eJIFFY OS startup function can be enabled or disabled directly from the BIOS:
In the PC Health Status, we can find detailed info regarding the temperatures, fan speeds or voltages, but I find weird that the manufacturer did not choose to display the CPU temperature, but the “Offset to TCC Activation Temp.”; in the same menu, we can adjust the Smart Fan Function :
The Power Management Setup sub-menu allows us to resume by different connected devices on USB or by PCI/PCI-E/LAN; here we can also enable or disable the EUP Function:
The ACPI Settings sub-menu lets us modify the ACPI Sleep State:
In the CPU Configuration sub-menu, we can find some usual options, like Limit CPUID Maximum, Execute Disable Bit or Intel Virtualization Tech.; this menu also shows us extra info regarding the installed CPU:
The SATA Configuration sub-menu allows us to set the SATA mode, and we can modify advanced options for each port like “Staggered Spin-up” or “External SATA Port”; these options will be different depending on which SATA mode we choose:
In the USB Configuration sub-menu, we can enable or disable the USB interfaces:
The SuperIO Configuration sub-menu comes with only one option and allows us to enable or disable temperature output to 80-port:
In case we have TPM hardware installed on the motherboard header, we can set it in the TPM configuration sub-menu:
The Chipset menu, comes with 3 more options: “Northbridge”, “Southbridge” and “ME Subsystem”:
The Northbridge sub-menu allows us to set which graphic adapter to initialize first, but also to enable or disable Internal Graphics Device multi-monitor capability:
In the Southbridge sub-menu, we can set the system behavior in case of a power failure, enable/disable the HD audio (when the system is running on the Integrated Graphics, one more option will show: Azalia Internal HDMI codec, which can be enabled or disabled), or set the case open warning feature:
The Intel ME Subsystem Configuration sub-menu allows us to see the currently installed ME version, or to enable/disable the ME Subsystem:
The M.I.B. III menu allows us to set some or the voltages and some other tweaks:
The Integrated Clock Chip Configuration sub-menu, we can set overclocking profiles in BIOS:
The Clock Manipulation sub-menu comes with some other options, most of which are locked:
The Performance Tuning sub-menu comes with two other menus: CPU Configuration sub-menu and Chipset Configuration:
In the CPU Configuration menu, we can set the current limits and power limits for Turbo Mode; if the EIST Technology is disabled, the Turbo option will not show:
In the Memory Multiplier Configuration menu, we can only see the current memory multiplier setting and the preset timings:
When running on the Integrated Graphics, the GT Overclocking menu will also appear:
In the Boot Menu, we can set the priority of the boot devices:
The Security menu presents itself with only one option: to set the Administrator Password:
Finally, in the Save and Exit menu we can save, discard or load default settings:
CPU : Intel I5 2500K Retail
CPU Cooler: Noctua U12P SE2
Motherboard : ECS H67H2-M
RAM : G.Skill Ripjaws F3-12800CL8D-4GBRM
Video : Sparkle X460 Calibre 1GB
Power Supply : Cooler Master 850W
HDD : Seagate Barracuda 320GB 7200.10
Case: Cooler Master ATCS 840
The board does not offer the possibility to overclock the CPU via multiplier or memory , and the benchmarks were done while running at stock speeds, with Turbo feature off:
With the help of AIDA64, we can extract more information regarding the board and its components:
The eSF utility allows us to set custom fan profiles for the CPU, or select from predefined ones:
The board does also come with the eBLU application, which searches automatically for the latest BIOS and prompts us to install it if available:
The eDLU utility searches automatically on the web for the latest software updates:
With the latest Intel Integrated Graphics drivers from the website, I have performed some tests in various games and synthetic benchmarks:
AIDA64 CPU Queen
AIDA64 PhotoWorxx
AIDA64 Zlib
AIDA64 AES
AIDA64 CPU Hash
AIDA64 FPU VP8
AIDA64 FPU Julia
AIDA64 FPU Mandel
AIDA64 FPU SinJulia
Cinebench R10
Cinebench R11.5 CPU Score
CrystalMark
PCMark05 System Suite
PCMark Vantage Suite
3DMark 2001 Default Run
3DMark 2003 CPU Score
3DMark 2005 CPU Score
3DMark 2006 CPU Score
3DMark Vantage CPU Score
3DMark11 Performance Score
PerformanceTest 7 CPU Mark
SuperPI 1.5 XS 2MB
wPrime 32M
Crysis Very High DX10 1920x1200
Street Fighter 4 1920x1200
Far Cry 2 Ultra DX10 1920x1200
After working with some P67 boards in the past which performed excellent, I can say that the H67 chipset has some very restrictive limitations in place, like the fixed 1333 maximum memory speed or the lack of ability to overclock the CPU by multiplier. Because of that, I would not recommend getting an unlocked K CPU to use on this board (even if the Intel Integrated Graphics is more powerful on the K variants) if you are not going to step-up and get a P67 motherboard in the near future.
Before starting testing, I have tried to raise the memory frequency to 1600MHz with the Intel Extreme Tuning utility, because the option was available in the software (so I could do a fair comparison of the product with the other P67 motherboards reviewed in the past), but after restarting the system, the utility resumed by mentioning “some settings could not be applied”; to check what was set, I fired up AIDA64 and it seemed that only the timings were altered and the memory frequency remained exactly the same.
I had some problems at first trying to run on Intel HD graphics; before starting testing, I have performed some memory stability tests to see if everything is OK and got no errors at all. However, when removing the GTX 460 and installing the Intel Graphics drivers, I first got a freeze at the Welcome screen (no BSOD, but hard Reset was the only option) and at the next boot I have tried to run 3DMark 2001; the first two tests passed, but when I have reached the Dragon level, I got a freeze, with some small artifacts. On the next reboot I have tried to run 3DMark 2003 to find that it was freezing when loading the first test and 3DMark 2005 was not even passing the initial loading screen. After removing one memory module and re-ran 3DMark 2001, everything went fine, along with the other tests; the next step was to put the memory module back and to increase the IMC voltage from 1.05V to 1.1V; everything went well afterward, no freezes, no artifacts.I found this need for extra voltage very strange, considering that the CPU with the same dual channel memory kit ran fully stable on the P67 motherboards, but also in the tests with the GTX460.
Even if the memory was clocked at 1333MHz instead of 1600MHz , I was impressed with the results, the H67H2-M being extremely close to the competition, even if it lacked the overclocking feature.
The Aptio BIOS firmware this board comes with does not have the same friendliness as the UEFI interface; the mouse support was missing, along with the ability to take snapshots of the UI, while in the BIOS.
I would like to thank again to ECS for offering me a sample of this product for review!