14 DAY TRIAL // Even though it has already made an appearance at Computex 2010, in June, the high-grade Black Series P55H-AK motherboard has still not become available, but ECS (Elitegroup Computer Systems) decided it would at least offer an update on it and, thus, added its product page to its website.
The motherboard is designed as a fairly powerful platform for top-of-the-line gaming systems, even though it does not exactly score a record in terms of expansion capabilities.
Still, the motherboard can, in fact, boast of having everything most enthusiasts except, perhaps, those truly hard-core ones, could ever want, and that includes advanced technologies and a range of overclocking-friendly features.
In terms of BIOS tweaking, end-users will benefit from a debug LED and Power, Reset and Clear CMOS buttons.
Also, as far as actual specifications go, the board comes with not just the usual array of connectivity, storage and I/O options, but also a number of next-generation capabilities.
ECS outfitted its creation with six SATA 3.0 Gbps ports, two eSATA connectors, dual Gigabit Ethernet and 7.1 channel audio, as well as a pair of SATA 6.0 Gbps ports and even two Super Speed USB 3.0 connectors.
As for what makes this LGA 1156-ready board unique, it has a dark color theme, 15μ gold contacts on the CPU socket and RAM slots (DDR3-2,600+ memory), the PLX PEX 8608 PCIe bridge and an NVIDIA NF200 bridge chip that allows the existing 3 PCI Express slots to support 3-way SLI or Quad CrossFireX setups.
Unfortunately, ECS kept silent in regards to pricing and availability. Since the product was already shown at the trade show two months ago, one might assume it would not be too far from stores by now, but there is, in the end, no way of knowing how long it will take for sales to actually start.