ECS is a company know for their cost-effective motherboards, and we were surprised to see them releasing a high-end socket 1156 motherboard with two SATA-600 ports, two eSATA-600 ports, four USB 3.0 ports, three PCI Express x16 slots, two Gigabit Ethernet ports, a POST diagnostics display, and a 14-phase voltage regulator circuit.

The first thing that caught our attention was the fact that finally ECS decided to build a motherboard with a decent color scheme. Traditionally, ECS uses a carnival of colors on their motherboards, and usually on a single board you will usually find at least six different colors. On the new P55H-AK, however, ECS decided to go with white and gray, giving this motherboard a very professional looks. Even though ECS improved their taste in color-picking, next time they should pay more attention to better match the shades of the colors being used, as the gray used on the PCI Express x16 slots is not the same gray used on the memory sockets, and the white  used on the PCI Express x1 slots, PCI slot, USB headers, and SATA ports are not of the same hue.

The P55H-AK has four passive heatsinks, one on top of the P55 chip, one on top of the NVIDIA NF200 bridge chip, and two on top of the transistors of the voltage regulator circuit. They are interconnected using heatpipes, and they use a color scheme that matches the overall looks of the motherboard (finally!).

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Figure 1: ECS P55K-AK motherboard