Introducing the Intel H55 Express using the ASRock H55M Pro motherboard. Two motherboards based on Intel H55 Express by ASRock and Biostar
Designed for the installation of processors manufactured by Intel. The review of this product will be of interest to those buyers who wish to purchase a device in the gaming segment in the budget class. Specifications, reviews and expert recommendations will help users make the right choice before buying.
Assortment of interfaces in the Asus P7H55 motherboard
This motherboard, unlike its counterparts in the computer market, has one important feature - the presence of all the necessary interfaces and connectors for connecting peripherals. The truth is very confusing for many owners of the form factor of the motherboard. After all, the heap of connectors on the mATX board creates inconveniences when connecting devices.
Along with a wide range of interfaces, the board is available on the market at a decent price (up to 5000 rubles). True, for this, within the walls of Asus, technologists took a small step back and installed conventional capacitors instead of standard solid-state drives. Also, on the board, the owner can find many controllers that do not have Asus brand markings.
First meeting
The fact that the Asus P7H55 motherboard belongs to the budget class is indicated not only by its cost, but also by the package bundle. In addition to the main device, in the box the owner will find a brief instruction manual, disks with drivers, a dummy for the rear panel and two cables: SATA and ATA. In user reviews, there is a lot of negativity to the manufacturer regarding the impossibility of connecting several SATA drives to the system - you need to buy additional interface cables in the store, which is completely inconvenient.
There are questions to the manufacturer and regarding adapters for connecting components to the power supply of the system. However, as experts assure, this issue should fall on the shoulders of the manufacturers of the power supply. Indeed, according to the world standard, all the necessary connectors must be on the power supply unit.
What does compactness and cost reduction lead to?
As the owners assure by the reviews in the media, the Asus P7H55 motherboard is not designed to increase performance through overclocking. The problem is that there is free space for installing a powerful cooler on the processor. Capacitors lined up in several rows around the perimeter of the processor socket will not allow installing a powerful cooling system.
The pursuit of compactness has led to the fact that the user may have problems installing proprietary RAM modules with cooling grilles on the side edges. The same high capacitors placed right next to the DDR3 connectors do not allow memory modules to be inserted into the slot. Fortunately, capacitors block access to the interface from one side only. The presence of 4 receivers for memory modules can partially solve the problem with installing non-standard strips.
Expansion boards and video controllers
Asus P7H55 owners who have PCI devices for connection (TV tuner, sound adapter or network card) were more fortunate with the purchase than the others. After all, the manufacturer, in addition to the standard PCIex16 interface, has provided its product with two PCI interfaces and one PCIex1 port. The motherboard is equipped with video output connectors (VGA analog interface and DVI digital outputs with HDMI). True, to output the video signal, you will need a processor with an integrated video core.
In terms of connecting hard drives, users will also have no problems. The motherboard has 6 corresponding SATA connectors. In addition, they are placed rather compactly, near the drive cage. Owners of old optical drives with an IDE interface will also be pleased. There is a corresponding connector on the board.
System board specifications
The motherboard is based on the chipset and is designed to install all processors of the Intel Core i7 / i5 / i3 line, as well as Pentium processors that are installed on an LGA 1156 socket. There are four DDR3 interface slots for installing RAM, which support the operation of modules at 1066 frequencies -2200 MHz. The maximum supported memory capacity is 16 GB. The interface for connecting hard drives works according to the SATAIII standard, but does not support the creation of arrays at the hardware level.
As you can see from the review, for the Asus P7H55 motherboard, the technical specifications look quite attractive, although they have a number of limitations. But as practice shows, the same RAID array is used by only a few users for every million customers. All owners are more interested in the bandwidth and stability that the motherboard can demonstrate in games and work with resource-intensive applications.
Decent BIOS
But at first glance, an unremarkable BIOS that does not have a built-in graphical shell clearly hints to the owner that overclocking is a basic functionality for the Asus P7H55 motherboard. Settings and power management are possible for both the processor and RAM with a video adapter. And there is no need to think that the user is only presented with a choice of actions from the recommended list. There are also settings with manual data entry, as is implemented on gaming motherboards.
The only drawback that all owners of this motherboard complain about in their reviews is the language pack that the BIOS is equipped with. The manufacturer provided it with six popular languages, among which there is no Russian. And if you consider that the operating instructions are written in English, then many users may have problems when setting up the system.
Drivers and software
Owners of the Asus P7H55 motherboard do not need to spend hours on the Internet selecting the necessary utilities to install drivers and all the necessary software to overclock the platform. Asus is ahead of all its competitors in this matter, bringing together all the necessary set on one disc. All utilities and drivers have a convenient multimedia shell, which will install the software necessary for the user on the computer in a matter of minutes.
As a toolkit for overclocking the processor and memory by changing the voltage on the motherboard, the manufacturer chose the TurboV EVO program. The fact is that this is the only stable product that can overclock the integrated graphics core on Intel processors. True, many owners, judging by their feedback, believe that all operations with an increase in frequency should be performed in the BIOS (it takes less time to check the stability of the work after restarting the computer).
Testing and overclocking
The performance of a motherboard whose characteristics are more dependent on the processor, memory and video card is quite difficult to measure. Therefore, many test laboratories are guided not by performance, but by the stability of the system in overclocking (constant voltage, heating, no failures and failures at maximum loads). This is where the representative of the budget class was able to surprise all users who wished to test this motherboard and compare it with more expensive representatives of the computer market.
Autumn high stability and productivity in work is guaranteed by the introduction of some innovations from the manufacturer Asus. This is a 6-phase system for powering the processor, proprietary technologies for BIOS protection, intelligent overclocking and cooling system management, and other additional sets of functions.
Game potential
The Asus P7H55 motherboard has one interesting feature that enthusiasts have discovered while testing the device in dynamic resource-intensive games. When installing a processor based on Core i3 and an AMD Radeon HD 5-7 series video adapter, the motherboard automatically adapts to the resources of the installed components and fully reveals their potential in games. For comparison, the Core i7 processor only surpassed the performance of its younger brother by a small margin.
As the owners note in their reviews, this phenomenon occurs at the BIOS level. Judging by the statistics reflected in the testing programs, the intelligent system of the motherboard performs controlled automatic overclocking of the processor, memory and video card, forcing them to work at the same frequency. This action will definitely lead to an increase in productivity.
Finally
As practice shows, users should not have any complaints about budget-class devices with a corresponding low cost that take part in testing with more expensive motherboards. Yes, there are drawbacks in terms of compact placement of capacitors on the Asus P7H55, but this is more of an organizational issue that does not have much effect on performance.
But there are many advantages and they all play an important role for the future owner when buying: the presence of all possible connectors, the presence of video outputs, digital sound, a gigabit network and similar interfaces, which in the past few years have begun to disappear from the devices of many other manufacturers.
More recently, a new family of Clarkdale processors with an integrated video core was introduced. Especially for these processors, the system logic of the 5th Intel H57, H55 and Q57 Express series was developed, a feature of which is the support of the digital interface FDI (Flexible Display Interface) for outputting the video signal built into the processor GPU. As well as solutions based on the Intel P55 Express chipset, platforms based on Intel H57 and H55 Express have an Intel LGA1156 processor socket. More details about the architecture of the new chipsets, differences and other features can be found in the review of the Intel DH55TC motherboard, which is a kind of "reference" from the processor manufacturer. In today's review, we will look at the GA-H55M-UD2H motherboard on Intel H55 Express from one of the leading motherboard manufacturers, GIGABYTE, and try to see the differences from the “reference”.
GIGABYTE has expanded its lineup with four solutions based on Intel H55 Express system logic and one on Intel H57 Express.
First, let's briefly describe them.
The most budgetary model in the series is. It is made in the microATX form factor and does not have additional controllers that could expand the capabilities of the disk subsystem. There are only two slots for RAM, but despite this, the board supports DDR3-2133 + memory. The GIGABYTE GA-H55M-S2H motherboard does not belong to the Ultra Durable 3 category, so the bulk of the capacitors on it are of the usual type with liquid electrolyte, the only exception is the processor and RAM power supply unit.
Today we will talk about the motherboard in more detail, but, nevertheless, we will briefly describe it as well. Compared to the first model, it has a number of small advantages:
- Four slots for RAM;
- External eSATA port;
- DisplayPort;
- FireWire controller with two IEEE 1394a ports;
- Ultra Durable 3 compliant.
The motherboard differs from the GIGABYTE GA-H55M-UD2H in support of the USB 3.0 interface (two ports of the NEC D720200F1 chip) and the presence of an additional SATA controller to support two SATA ports with the possibility of organizing RAID 0, 1 and JBOD. It can also be noted that on the GIGABYTE GA-H55M-USB3, unlike previous models, the processor power supply was reinforced, as evidenced by the appearance of an 8-pin power connector and the use of power transistors of a different type.
The model differs from the GIGABYTE GA-H55M-UD2H, which we will be reviewing today, in greater expansion options. Since it is made in the ATX form factor, this made it possible to implement two more PCI slots on the GIGABYTE GA-H55-UD3H. Some of the disadvantages of the GIGABYTE GA-H55-UD3H are the absence of a FireWire controller and the absence of a DisplayPort video output on the interface panel.
The most "advanced" motherboard in the series at the moment can be considered based on the Intel H57 Express chipset. The difference between the senior chipset and Intel H55 Express is the greater number of USB ports and PCI Express lines. Also, an important difference of the Intel H57 Express chipset is the possibility of organizing RAID arrays of levels 0, 1, 5 and 10 on the SATA ports. In all other respects, the GIGABYTE GA-H57M-USB3 motherboard repeats the GIGABYTE GA-H55M-USB3 model. And first of all, it stands out for the presence of a USB 3.0 controller with two ports on the I / O panel.
It is noteworthy that none of the models based on Intel H55 and H57 Express chipsets received support for the SATA 3.0 interface. In addition, you can see that all models use a similar processor power scheme, although the GIGABYTE GA-H55M-USB3 and GIGABYTE GA-H57M-USB3 supposedly use a more powerful node, which is worth paying attention to if a serious processor overclocking is expected.
GIGABYTE GA-H55M-UD2H motherboard specification:
|
Manufacturer |
|
|
Intel H55 Express |
|
|
CPU socket |
|
|
Supported processors |
Intel Core i7 / Core i5 / Core i3 |
|
Memory used |
DDR3 1666/1333/1066/800 MHz |
|
Memory support |
4 x 1.5V DDR3 DIMM dual channel architecture up to 16GB |
|
Expansion slots |
1 x PCI-E x16 (x16 PCI Express 2.0 lanes) |
|
Disk subsystem |
Intel P55 Express Chipset Supports: JMicron JMB368 Chip Supports: |
|
Sound subsystem |
Realtek ALC889 8-Channel High-Definition Audio Codec Supports Internal S / PDIF Port |
|
T.I. controller TXB43AB23 supports 2 IEEE 1394 ports |
|
|
LAN support |
Gigabit LAN Controller Realtek RTL8111D |
|
24-pin ATX power connector |
|
|
Cooling |
Aluminum radiator |
|
Fan connectors |
1 x for cpu cooler |
|
External I / O ports |
1 x PS / 2 ports for keyboard or mouse |
|
Internal I / O ports |
6 x USB |
|
2 x 64 Mbit Flash ROM, Award BIOS, PnP 1.0a, DMI2.0, SM BIOS 2.4, ACPI 1.0b |
|
|
Overclocking capabilities |
Frequency change: BCLK, PCI-Express, memory. |
|
Proprietary technologies |
@BIOS |
|
Equipment |
2 x SATA cable |
|
Form factor Dimensions, mm |
microATX |
|
Products webpage |
The latest BIOS and driver can be downloaded from the support page. |
The capabilities of the Intel H55 Express chipset are almost completely implemented on the GIGABYTE GA-H55M-UD2H motherboard: all six PCI Express lanes are involved, there is support for all four video outputs and 12 USB ports. There was not enough space on the board for only two more PCI slots. In addition, the functionality has been extended by several controllers. In particular, the iTE IT8720 chip is used to support the outdated COM and FDD ports, and the JMicron JMB368 chip is used to operate the IDE ATA-133/100/66/33 interface.
The motherboard GIGABYTE GA-H55M-UD2H came to us for testing without complete set and branded packaging. Judging by the manufacturer's photo, the packaging is very bright. It denotes Ultra Durable 3 technology and a suite of 6 proprietary Smart 6 utilities. The Smart 6 complex should improve system performance, reduce boot time, manage security and help restore the necessary system files with one click of the mouse.
GIGABYTE GA-H55M-UD2H motherboard package contents (obtained from official sources):
- DVD-disk with software and drivers for Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7;
- user manual in English, brief installation instructions;
- two Serial ATA cables;
- UltraDMA loop;
- branded sticker;
- cover for the rear panel of the case.
The package bundle of the GIGABYTE GA-H55M-UD2H, as expected, is small, and includes only the essentials.
All capacitors on the GIGABYTE GA-H55M-UD2H motherboard are polymer, and the chokes are with a ferrite core, as required by Ultra Durable 3 technology.
The system logic cooling system is small, as the Intel H55 Express chipset has low power consumption. During testing, the heatsink was just warm.
Despite the fact that the PCB of the motherboard GIGABYTE GA-H55M-UD2H is small, the layout has only one drawback - a long video card will block the latches of the RAM slots.
As we have already noted, the Intel H55 chipset supports six SATA ports, one of which is external, and twelve USB ports, half of which are brought to the interface panel.
There are not many slots for expansion cards on the GIGABYTE GA-H55M-UD2H - two PCIE x16 and two PCI. The bottom PCIE x16 slot has only four PCI Express lanes, and they are provided by the chipset and they comply with the PCI Express 1.1 specification in terms of bandwidth. Motherboard GIGABYTE GA-H55M-UD2H, like all other solutions in this series, supports CrossFireX technology in x16 + x4 configuration, which limits the ability to pair a pair of video cards.
From the rest of the interfaces of the GIGABYTE GA-H55M-UD2H motherboard, we can emphasize the presence of the T.I. TSB43AB23, which has two ports - external and internal, as well as the presence of a Realtek RTL8111D gigabit network controller.
As an audio codec, the 8-channel HDA codec Realtek ALC889 is used, the front panel connector of which supports the HDA and AC'97 output formats.
The processor's 6-phase power supply supports Dynamic Energy Saver Advanced. Near the memory slots, you can find four indicators that display the number of working phases. The power unit is equipped with a 4-pin power connector and has no additional transistor cooling elements.
A 2-phase PWM controller ISL6322G is used to control the power supply of the memory controller built into the processor.
The processor core is powered by a 4-phase power supply scheme based on the ISL6334 PWM controller. In general, such a power supply unit should provide support for all processors in the LGA 1156 package, and also does not prevent their moderate overclocking.
The following ports are displayed on the back panel of the GIGABYTE GA-H55M-UD2H motherboard: one PS / 2 for keyboard or mouse, optical S / PDIF, VGA and DVI video outputs, high-definition HDMI and DisplayPort, IEEE 1394a port, six USB ports, port eSATA, RJ45 connector for network connections, and six connectors for 8-channel audio.
Of the shortcomings of the GIGABYTE GA-H55M-UD2H, there are only two fan headers. Both fan headers are 4-pin, which means they support PWM power supply.
BIOS of the motherboard GIGABYTE GA-H55M-UD2H with Award code with a fairly wide range of settings that can be used to overclock the system.
All the settings necessary for overclocking are in the MB Intelligent Tweaker (M.I.T.) section, and the settings are divided into groups. In addition, this section monitors some system parameters, such as the frequency of the processor and memory, the temperature of the processor and chipset, as well as the current voltage on the processor and memory.
The settings required for overclocking are summarized in the table:
|
Parameter |
Menu name |
Range |
|
|
Processor technology |
C1E, TM2, EIST, Virtualization Technology, |
||
|
QPI bus multiplier |
|||
|
CPU multiplier |
|||
|
System bus frequency, MHz |
|||
|
Divider for memory |
System Memory Multipllier (SPD) |
||
|
PCI Express bus frequency |
PCI Express Frequency |
||
|
Proprietary dynamic overclocking technology |
Cruise, Sports, Racing, Turbo, Full Thrust |
||
|
Amplitude of processor signals |
700, 800, 900, 1000 mV |
||
|
Amplitude of PCI Express Bus Signals |
PCI Express Clock Drive |
700, 800, 900, 1000 mV |
|
|
RAM latency |
CAS Latency, tRCD, tRP, tRAS, tRRD, tWTR, tWR, tWTP, tRFC, tRTP, tRAW, CMD, tRD |
||
|
Processor voltage, V |
0.50000 - 1.9V |
||
|
Voltage on the QPI / Vtt bus, V |
|||
|
Northbridge tension |
|||
|
PLL supply voltage |
|||
|
Integrated GPU voltage |
CPU VAXG Voltage |
||
|
Voltage on memory modules, V |
|||
|
DRAM Termination |
|||
The number of settings in the BIOS of the motherboard GIGABYTE GA-H55M-UD2H is really very large.
The Advanced Core Features section contains settings for managing processor technologies.
Among all the settings, we can highlight the ability to change the QPI bus multiplier. Unlike motherboards based on Intel P55 Express system logic, the multipliers have become much larger, which allows you to more accurately determine its frequency during overclocking.
The GIGABYTE GA-H55M-UD2H motherboard supports XMP overclocking memory profiles, although they are optional.
Also, the BIOS has the ability to configure the timings and sub-timings of the RAM in full.
The number of settings designed to increase the supply voltage of the components is also sufficient for a good overclocking.
For example, the voltage on the processor can be increased to 1.9 V, which in some cases will be more than enough. Moreover, it is gratifying that the critical and high stress values are prudently highlighted in bright colors.
The voltage on the chipset can be increased up to 1.5 V. This voltage value is even excessive for the Intel H55 Express chipset, on which the supply voltage can be not increased or increased insignificantly even with very strong processor overclocking.
Another new setting that can be highlighted is the CPU VAXG Voltage, which allows you to increase the supply voltage on the integrated GPU.
In the monitoring section "PC Health Status" you can follow:
- temperature of the motherboard and processor;
- the rotation speed of the processor cooler and the case fan;
- voltage on the processor core and RAM;
- voltage on power lines +5 V and + 12V.
In addition, in this section you can enable the function of automatic control of the CPU cooler CPU Smart FAN Control. Unfortunately, there is no automatic control of the case fan speed.
Overclocking capabilities
The system bus frequency of the GIGABYTE GA-H55M-UD2H motherboard with an Intel Core i7 661 processor has been increased to 230 MHz.
Testing
The following hardware was used to test the capabilities of the motherboards.
|
CPU |
Intel Core i5 661 (LGA1156, 3.33 GHz, L3 4MB) |
|
Scythe Kama Angle Rev. B |
|
|
RAM |
2x DDR3-2000 1024 MB Kingston HyperX KHX16000D3T1K3 / 3GX |
|
Video card |
ASUS EN9800GX2 / G / 2DI / 1G GeForce 9800 GX2 1GB GDDR3 PCI-E 2.0 |
|
HDD |
Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 ST3500418AS 500GB SATA-300 NCQ |
|
Optical drive |
ASUS DRW-1814BLT SATA |
|
Power Supply |
Seasonic SS-650JT Active PFC 650W 120mm fan |
|
CODEGEN M603 MidiTower, 2x 120 mm blowing / blowing fans |
Test results:
The performance test results on the GIGABYTE GA-H55M-UD2H motherboard were slightly worse than on the Intel DH55TC motherboard. It is difficult to say what this is connected with, since the basic parameters on both systems were the same (checked several times): either the Intel board uses hidden features, or updated BIOS versions should be expected for products from other manufacturers.
Working with integrated video
A similar picture is observed when testing the integrated GPU: there is a slight difference in the performance of the GIGABYTE GA-H55M-UD2H and Intel DH55TC, and not in favor of the former.
Energy consumption
|
Power consumption, W |
|||
|
GIGABYTE GA-H55M-UD2H + Intel Core i5-661 |
Intel DH55TC + Intel Core i5-661 |
ASUS M4A785TD-V EVO + AMD Phenom II X3 720 |
|
|
Simple (no load) |
|||
|
Onboard GPU stress (FurMark) |
|||
|
Stress on processor and integrated video core (EVEREST + FurMark) |
|||
A system based on GIGABYTE GA-H55M-UD2H motherboard has higher power consumption than a similar system based on Intel DH55TC motherboard. This happens primarily because by default the GIGABYTE GA-H55M-UD2H sets a higher voltage for the processor. Secondly, it is equipped with a large number of controllers, which also slightly increase power consumption.
The competing AMD platform with an AMD Phenom II X3 720 processor and an AMD 785G system logic motherboard with an integrated Radeon HD4200 video core has a higher power consumption, but its cost in this case will be lower.
Testing the audio path based on the Realtek ALC889 codec
Overall Results (RightMark Audio Analyzer)
16-bit, 44.1 kHz
The built-in Realtek ALC889 audio codec shows very good results, so we think it will be enough for the vast majority of owners.
conclusions
The GIGABYTE GA-H55M-UD2H motherboard can become a good basis for a work, multimedia or even gaming system. This model supports a number of proprietary technologies from GIGABYTE (UltraDurable 3, Smart 6), has a FireWire controller, is equipped with a high-quality audio codec and supports four types of video outputs. That allows you to connect any monitor to it. In the BIOS of the GIGABYTE GA-H55M-UD2H motherboard, you can find a very large number of settings required for overclocking with a wide control range and small steps. The only thing that will not contribute to high overclocking results is not the most powerful processor power supply regulator with a 4-pin ATX12V power connector. In the lineup of GIGABYTE on the Intel H55 Express chipset, there are also models with a more powerful power supply unit, so if you are into overclocking, you should pay attention to the GIGABYTE GA-H55M-USB3 or GIGABYTE GA-H57M-USB3, which in addition have USB 3.0 support. If serious overclocking is not expected and there is a desire or need to save a little, then the GIGABYTE GA-H55M-UD2H will be a good choice.
Sea Sonic for the equipment provided for the test bench.
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The century of socket 1156 is already leaving, all have already been updated for 2011 for a long time, but I decided to try such an assembly.
It is impossible to convey the riot of emotions that I experienced when unpacking the package.
An interesting story, how I chose a product.
Found a suitable board for a good price.
The seller has 4 options. 
I added myself to the order, wrote to the intermediary: I need an ACUS !!! 
Answer: ok, and increased the price
And what has arrived? 
It is very similar, it also has an 8-pin power supply, a heatsink on a VRM.(sarcasm)
I settled the issue with support, made a return to my Account, I will order with the next package.
Deceived by the seller, not the middleman. And I saved money by not requesting a product photo.
The motherboard is used and in the form far from the commodity. Does the seller have a warehouse in a shed in a swamp?
Very dissatisfied with the appearance, but the packaging was excellent.
It was shipped in a regular box, the motherboard is wildly wrapped in a bubble wrap, and the socket is covered with a piece of paper from a glossy magazine. 
This is what the new board looked like 
What upset me, because I was not trying to buy it: the lack of a radiator on the VRM zone, 4-pin power supply, only two RAM slots. Only "power" capacitors are solid.
Specifications 
Size: microATX 244mm x 210mm
Now back to the main point: why socket 1156? It's all about the processors, the decommissioned server Xeon x3440, which are analogs of the first generation i7, cost ridiculous money.
Found a very handy sign on the net. 
Prices for older models are no longer relevant (below)
For tests I ordered х3440 and х3470 (prices for $ 15/26, respectively.)
What do we have in this case? For a thousand rubles - i7, which can be decently overclocked on the bus (BCLK)
What is overclocking fraught with? An increase in both the temperature of the processor itself and the motherboard components, especially the VRM zone.
This means that you need to install relatively expensive cooling for a percentage and buy a road for the motherboard.
How expensive is everything? The minimum adequate motherboard costs from 36 bucks, the one that I wanted to get? Asus p7h55-m
There is a radiator on the power supply circuits, the supply phases are not enough, of course. 
ASUS P7P55D is already decently more expensive, about $ 60 per tao. (+ shipping) 
There are even more advanced options, but here the price / performance ratio falls.
I got the most scourge motherboard for the test without radiators and 5 power phases.
The review will be narrowly focused.
Such a package has arrived. 
Used motherboard box 
Condition ... hmmm. 
There are only two propeller connectors: the CPU and one Sys Fan, which is located at the bottom of the board. 
Point one, working capacity.
The area of the pins on the front panel is signed, everything is clear. We close PW. 
The motherboard started up.
In the BIOS section, the integrated peripherals tab, switch the operation mode to AHCI 
To boot from a flash drive, we prioritize USB-HDD.
Windows booted, updated, etc. and so on. I installed all the drivers, and now the main thing.
Point two, overclocking- its main task.
I'll hide it under the spoiler
Open the first settings of the first line of the BIOS
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The latest BIOS version, F3. 
The first line of the sub-menu will show the current state of the PC. 
You can notice that the bus, instead of the standard 133 MHz, has already been overclocked by me to 186 MHz. At the same time, the CPU frequency is 3.5 GHz, and the memory frequency is 1800 MHz, with timings of 10-11-11-28.
Point two: Advanced frequency settings. 
Strange, but working with a multiplier is allowed, but problematic. To check the overclocking capabilities on the bus, I set a multiplier of 9 and could not then roll back to 19, I reset the BIOS. In general, it is not worth touching.
I set the QPI multiplier to the minimum, because with overclocking of the bus, the frequency of the QPI bus will also increase.
Advanced CPU core features: 
It is recommended to turn off the turbo boost and energy saving algorithms.
To access overclocking on the bus, you need the section BCLK control translate into position Included.
Memory multiplier, maximum: x10.
The rest did not touch.
Manual timing is possible. In auto mode, the motherboard set normal values, did not change. 
Advanced voltage settings 
There is no direct control of the processor voltage, but you can change the DVID values.
There are options: auto, norm, numerical values above and below the norm. With the 186 bus, the processor works stably without increasing the voltage.
Overclocking technique ideally:
1) Set the minimum processor multiplier. (x9)
2) The memory multiplier is limited to the minimum (x6)
3) We set the BCLK bus to 200 MHz and change it step by step according to the result.
* the system has started and is stable in heavy benchmarks -> after the run, we increase it by 2 (5) units.
* the system did not start or is not stable in heavy benchmarks -> lower it by 2 (5) units.
4) If the Windows starts, but it crashes in tests / bsod crashes after starting, we increase the processor voltage by one step.
The motherboard does not have heatsinks on the VRM zone, so overclocking was carried out without increasing the voltage.
I put the cooler down, because the board is not in the case. 
After running LinX, the temperature on the power circuits is about 82 degrees and is not evenly distributed. (in apartment 30 + С) 
In everyday tasks (games too), the processor is loaded at 0-50% of its maximum and the VRM temperature is about 50C
Already ordered radiators. 
Is this antiquity worth attention? Yes, definitely.
In synthetics, it loses to my i7 7700, which is logical, BUT! Considering the price, its gaming performance is remarkable.
Stability test example 
System config:
x3440, 3.5 GHz, Tower Deepcool GAMMAXX S40, Rx460, SSD 120GB, 4 + 4 1600 MHz RAM.
The processor has enough power to load 1060, details in the CPU review are coming soon. 
Power consumption with rx460
peak 245 W 
idle 90-95W 
The cost including delivery from China of two sets is $ 210. 
You can limit yourself to the build-in and take an i3 or i5, you get a very budget PC for work.
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Obviously, the Intel H55 chipset has gained a lot of popularity among users and motherboard manufacturers, because no Intel chipset with an integrated graphics core has yet been presented in so many different modifications. Technically, every Intel processor for the LGA 1156 platform now has a graphics core, but in practice it can only be used on motherboards based on Intel H57, H55, Q57 and Q55 chipsets. Nevertheless, the Intel HD Graphics video turned out to be quite successful and modern, moreover, we repeat, it is in every processor of the Westmere family, so the temptation to use it is quite great.
The ASRock H55M Pro was the first motherboard we reviewed capable of using Intel HD Graphics. Despite the fact that the product is made in Micro ATX format, H55M Pro is a fairly functional solution with its own peculiarities. Such as, for example, two slots for video cards. The place of ASRock H55M Pro is seen as a functional media center or a powerful entertainment PC, since the board has the necessary set of outputs and interfaces for this. But today we are not talking about her. ASRock has already released over 10 products based on Intel H55 chipset. Today we will look at the younger model - ASRock H55M-LE, which will be more appropriate in an office or relatively inexpensive home PC.
Specifications
Since the ASRock H55M-LE is designed for building affordable PCs, the developers did without unnecessary frills here. The main functionality of the board is provided by the capabilities of the Intel H55 chipset. In addition, only a PCIe gigabit network controller and an eight-channel HDA codec were required, which today is practically the de facto standard.
Design and layout
Complaints can only be caused by the fact that there are two slots for RAM, which will definitely create problems during the upgrade - you simply cannot take and add a couple of modules here. However, practice shows that over the entire life cycle, most systems do not "wait" for an upgrade.
It is very interesting that the motherboard specifications support colossally high frequencies, up to DDR3-2600, although only in overclocking mode, but this is understandable.
Meanwhile, the board also captivates with the traditionally thoughtful arrangement of elements. All connectors to which any cables are connected are soldered on the sides of the PCB. There were also no incompatibilities in the mutual arrangement of slots and connectors.
Recently, when it comes to products that will potentially be used in offices and, possibly, industrial desktops, there has been a tendency to conscientiously implement pads for connecting COM and LPT ports. On ASRock H55M-LE, the corresponding pads are placed in close proximity to the logical location of the brackets with the physical implementation of the ports. As practice shows, if at home these archaic interfaces, with the exception of specific tasks like the firmware of some devices, are not used, then a lot of equipment is still produced and sold for the industry, one way or another using COM or LPT.
With the slots for additional devices in ASRock H55M-LE, everything is still quite simple. In addition to the invariable PCI Express 2.0 x16, which is not neglected even on ultra-compact boards for HTPC, there are two more PCI and one PCI Express 2.0 x1.
The switching voltage regulator of the processor has four PWM phases. The element base in this case can be called classical, because ordinary field-effect transistors (MOSFETs), chokes and polymer capacitors are used in the circuits. It controls the PWM controller Richtek RT8857.
We have not seen this chip before, but judging by the technical characteristics, this is a completely modern and functional four-phase controller, two channels of which are provided with built-in MOSFET drivers.
Here, we note that ASRock still pays a lot of attention to the convenience of upgrades and compatibility, therefore, on the ASRock H55M-LE PCB, as well as on other products of the company for the LGA 1156 platform, there are four additional holes that can be used to install coolers equipped with a mount for LGA 775. By the way, very convenient. After all, LGA 1156 was announced last, so it happens that many not the newest multi-platform cooling systems are compatible even with LGA 1366, but "do not know" about LGA 1156.
The sole chip of the Intel H55 Chipset is cooled by a small aluminum alloy pin heatsink. Considering the heat release of this crystal, this is quite enough for it.
The board's I / O panel looks quite adequate to the product's functionality. Obviously, for the sake of completeness, the HDMI connector is missing here, but the DVI present here is easily transformed into it. To convert the output to HDMI 1.3 with support for Full HD, Deep Color, xvYCC and HBR audio, you only need a passive adapter.
It is also important that the surface of ASRock H55M-LE has jumpers that can be used to turn off the power supply to USB ports in standby mode, which saves energy and avoids the annoying LEDs of USB devices from time to time when the computer is not in use.
BIOS Setup
ASRock H55M-LE BIOS is based on AMI microcode. The setup utility screen meets us with rather detailed information about the current BIOS version, the model of the installed central processor and its main technical characteristics, as well as about the memory modules and the mode in which they work.
Before starting testing, the basic I / O system of the board was updated to the newest version at the time of testing - 1.6, dated September 2010. It is obvious that ASRock pays great attention to the support of its products, which can be seen at least from the constant BIOS updates. ASRock offers several options for the procedure for changing the firmware of the board, but it is very gratifying that among them there is the most adequate and convenient way - with the help of the appropriate flasher contained in the BIOS itself. Using the ASRock Instant Flash item, you can update the firmware from a number of media, including a USB flash drive, bypassing any operating systems.
At the beginning of the section there are a number of sub-items with which you can overclock components in pseudo-automatic mode, that is, using one of several overclocking profiles configured by the developers. However, the board is not deprived of all the necessary "manual" settings.
It is also important that at the end of the "OC Tweaker" section there is an option to save three profiles of settings made by the user.
Today we will look at the first motherboard based on the Intel H55 Express chipset, designed to work with 1156-pin processors from the same manufacturer. This is the first such board that came to our laboratory, so let's start with the presentation of this set of logic and related ones. And let's go, as usual, from afar :).
With regard to computers intended for home use, the generally accepted classification includes four market segments: flagship, performance, mass and budget.
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When at the end of 2008 Intel introduced the new Nehalem architecture in the form of Core i7 processors on the Bloomfield core with 1366 pins and the corresponding X58 Express chipset, few people would have thought that this would be all. Several CPU models and a single chipset are all that the world's leading processor manufacturer in the top segment still offers.However, the rest were left at the mercy of processors with a 775-pin connector, whose history stretches back to 2004, during the NetBurst architecture. Intel, indeed, had nowhere to rush to bring a new platform to the market: its CPU Core 2 still fared very well against AMD Athlon and Phenom.
But after the appearance of the Phenom II processors, thanks to which the main competitor managed to come close to the mass and productive solutions of Intel both in specific performance (per GHz) and in frequency potential, the announcement of the new platform could not be postponed. Therefore, at the end of the summer of last 2009, a bundle of processors with an LGA 1156 socket and a P55 Express chipset was presented. There are only a few CPU models (all are quad-core, based on the Lynnfield core), and again only one set of logic. It seemed that history was repeating itself.
However, the processor socket with 1156 pins was originally conceived as a complete replacement for the "old man" LGA 775. And at the very beginning of 2010 the expected expansion took place. Intel presented a whole "pack" of processors based on the Clarkdale core, as well as several sets of logic for them. However, the P55 Express is also compatible with new CPUs - there are no exceptions in terms of CPU support between the chipsets (yet). But they differ from each other still significantly. Let's try to summarize these differences in one table.