TechRadar Verdict
We like the P7H55-M. It's not perfected yet, but certainly a front runner among the H55 boards.
Pros
- +
Incremental base clock adjustment
- +
Lots of over-clocking adjustments to experiment with
- +
USB 3.0 and SATA 600 support
- +
Bullet-proof BIOS
- +
Competitive price
Cons
- -
Automatic over-clocking decidedly hit and miss
- -
Detailed over-clocking requires technical knowledge
- -
Can we have a clock multiplier over 24 please?
- -
Limited slots and only a single x16 PCIe
- -
No external SATA port
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The release of Intel's Clarkdale chip and its accompanying H55 chipset means new boards all round for Intel's LGA1156 boys. The shiny new P7H55-M from ASUS aims to offer a full-blooded experience at little more than budget price and comes with a raft of overclocking tools to keep the most dedicated explorer of performance tweaks happy.
It has the neat ability to adjust its base clock in 1MHz increments, and you've got a Marvell SATA controller running two internal SATA 600 ports, and two external USB 3.0 ports, so you're tooled-up for fast drives.
The feature list is full of Asus' unique features; some lovely, some fairly pointless (does anybody on earth use Express Gate?). The two Asus is most pleased about are the new green-friendly Energy Processor Unit, which does clever things to voltage and multipliers across the whole board, and Turbo Unlocker – press a button and get an instant boost with unlocked chips (they tell us).
