ECS H61H2-A2 Deluxe

The differentiating factor in this motherboard is the BIOS interface, which is contrast to the conventional BIOS interfaces we are used to. It comes with an easy to use, graphics-rich BIOS interface that supports multiple languages and mouse for ease of use. The H61H2 —A2 also comes with on-board VGA and HDMI connectors which means there's no additional cost required for purchasing a graphics card. This board also comes with USB 3.0 and SATA 6 Gbps interface. However, a point of concern is the presence of only 2 DDR3 DIMM sockets, which means you can have a maximum of 8 GB of RAM.

As the board comes with a VGA connector, we restrained from using a graphics card which although lowers the graphics score, but gives a clearer picture of the board and CPU's graphics capability. We tested on a setup comprising 1 GB RAM, 7200 RPM HDD, Windows Ultimate 64-bit OS, and Intel Core i5 processor. Additionally, we also used Kuhler h20 620 CPU cooling system from Antec (which though quite effective is actually a pain to install). This CPU cooling system is similar to Intel's RTS2011 liquid cooling solution we used in testing for the Intel DX79S1 motherboard in this issue. In the PC Mark Vantage benchmark, H61H2-A2 gave a score of 4395 while in 3D Mark 06, the score was 1558; both these scores are good enough for this setup.

Bottomline: A decent motherboard which has rich connectivity options.