The P55 chipset really doesn’t have to do a lot.  The Lynnfield processor controls the PCIe and the memory, two chores that used to be the responsibility of the motherboard chipset.  That responsibility was the key to the diversity of the motherboard market in previous generations.  Now it is about the number of features that can be placed on the board, or the lowest price the board can be sold for. 

The ECS P55H-A has gone with features as well as low price, dual PCIe slots, support for DDR3 up to 2130MHz and 8-channel high definition audio and there are mail in rebates that bring the price of the board into the $99 range.  Steve did have trouble overclocking the board, but it is probably not anything that a new BIOS revision will not fix.

“Its feature set and benchmarks scores aren’t going to make consumers put it on lay-away for the holidays, but its ease-of-use and no-frills functionality are great selling points along with the $100 price tag. We’ve experienced a lot of ups and downs with ECS’s “Black Series” motherboards and we’ve seen where they’ve had to cut corners a bit to bring the price of the product down.”

Here are some more Motherboard articles from around the web:

Click Here to go to Motherboards  Motherboards