MSI - H55M-ED55 review
Intel H55 motherboard for Core i5
Review date: 16 February, 2010. Review by: IT Reviews Staff
The graphics outputs have the potential to cause some confusion, as the graphics core isn't part of the chipset but is housed within your new Core i3 or Core i5 600 CPU. If you decide to install a Core i5 700 or a Core i7 800 CPU in the MSI (or any other H55 motherboard), you'll find that the integrated graphics connectors will not work.
The other ports on the I/O panel are pretty much standard fare for a modern motherboard, with a dual-purpose PS/2 port for mouse or keyboard, six mini jacks with optical S/PDIF for the Realtek ALC889 audio, Realtek Gigabit LAN and six USB 2.0 ports.
There is one slightly unusual touch as the blue port next to the DVI-D connector doubles up as both a USB 2.0 port and an eSATA connector. This seems sensible as eSATA sounds like a good idea, but it is used by very few external devices so having the option of an extra USB port is welcome.
Memory support is impressive as the four slots support up to 16GB of 2,133MHz DDR3 RAM. The other eye-catching feature is the pair of PCI Express graphics slots that support CrossFireX. This isn't quite as good as it sounds, as the H55 chipset supports one slot with the full 16 lanes of PCI Express, while the second slot only has four lanes.
Initial impressions of the H55M-ED55 are very favourable as the build quality looks superb. The PCB is dark brown, with expansion and memory slots in blue and black to lend a suitably understated feeling of quality. The low profile cooler on the chipset looks like a fine piece of work while the pair of passive aluminium coolers that cover the power regulation hardware look chunky and purposeful and are linked by a heatpipe. All three coolers are secured to the board with metal screws and look fit for heavy duty cooling.
It comes as something of a surprise when you turn on the power for the first time and see the four LEDs that show the activity of the four power phases. With Green Power enabled you can watch as the power phases flash on and off or you can disable the feature in the BIOS and leave all of the phases enabled. When you get bored of the light show you can disable the LEDs in the BIOS, but it brings home the point that the power circuitry on this motherboard is unlikely to stress the cooling that MSI has employed.
The headers that are arrayed across the foot of the board are anonymous and carry no hint about their function so you'll need to read the manual to distinguish the front panel headers from the USB. Next to the main power connector there's an illuminated Power micro button along with plus and minus buttons for adjusting the base clock speed, as well as an OC Genie button.
You can usually rely on OC Genie to automatically overclock your CPU, but we found in this case that it refused to work correctly with our Core i5 661 CPU so we resorted to manual overclocking. The BIOS offers all the features that the diligent overclocker requires, but even so we only managed to crank the CPU up from 3.33GHz to 3.75GHz, when 4GHz should have been possible. We have previously run this CPU as fast as 4.4GHz so 3.75GHz is unimpressive.
Verdict
MSI has included a long list of features in the specification of this H55 motherboard. Add in superb build quality and it's no great surprise that the price is relatively high. That wouldn't be the end of the world, however the overclocking abilities are sorely limited, so for the time being we'd advise you approach this model with caution and hope that MSI revises the BIOS to improve performance.
Company: MSI
