Introduction

With the launch of Intel's Generation 2 Core family well under way, and revised boards fully in the consumer market, ECS has provided us with a revised product of their own, catering towards the enthusiast. ECS itself has, in recent years, entered the enthusiast market with their "Black Series" of products, which are targeted towards the advanced user. The ECS P67H2-A2, our subject today, is from the “Black” line of products, which we highlighted in a preview a couple of months ago, but it's no normal "Black Series"; it's a "Black Deluxe".
The Black Series of products from ECS centers around a tale of two defeated dragons who turned themselves into black holes in order to torment humanity, and have now returned looking to meet the heroes destined to slay them. An epic tale for what may very well prove to be a legendary board. Will the ECS P67H2-A2 prove to be the “Deluxe” weapon needed to slay the Sandybridge dragons? Read on to find out.

Specifications

Intel P67 Chipset

A few short months ago, Intel launched their latest platform, codenamed SandyBridge. Shortly after release the majority of motherboard chipsets were recalled by Intel for a revision, and today, all of those products are back on the store shelf, and not without a bit of fanfare. Manufacturer packaging lauds the inclusion of the latest revision of Intel's P67 chipset, the B3 stepping, and with good reason, as this indicates that the chipset's SATA drive controller will survive throughout the warranty period.


The above block diagram shows basic layout and functionality of Intel's P67 chipset. Supporting four SATA2 channels and two SATA 6 Gb/s channels natively, it offers full functionality and speed for both internal drives as well as for external drives over eSATA and USB3.0, thanks to a full-speed PCIe 2.0 implementation integrated directly into the CPU and chipset. In fact, the P67 chipset merely serves as a basic input/output hub, with the majority of features previously relegated to the chipset now fully integrated within the CPU silicon itself. This serves to provide high-speed, low latency throughput, but at the same time, does limit expansion possibilities a bit. With 16 PCIe 2.0 lanes in the CPU itself, and another eight lanes in the P67 silicon, the platform supports dual graphics connected directly to the CPU itself, and the remaining add-in devices, unless situated in one of the graphics ports, are all managed by the P67 chipset proper.

Like the past P55 chipset, USB3.0 connectivity is not provided natively, although unlike P55, the full speed PCIe 2.0 implementation in the P67 chipset ensures that external SATA and USB 3.0 controllers receive the bandwidth they need. USB 2.0, on the other hand, is almost over-allocated, with a total of 14 ports driven natively off the P67 chipset. Lost, though, is legacy device support for things like IDE drives and Floppy controllers, although like USB3.0, these can be added by manufacturers if they really want to. With drive technology advances where they are today, we've tossed out such legacy devices for recycling in favor of today's excellent drive performance and hope that almost everyone else does too.

Of course, that leads to today's product, the ECS P67H2-A2. Can it slay the dragons, and save mankind? We find out.

Packaging

The ECS P67H2-A2 comes in one of the flashiest boxes we have ever had in our hands. The pictures do not do it justice; even stacked among the other samples we have here, the eye is always drawn to its highly reflective, holographic surface. Both the front and the back are covered in logos depicting the technology the board supports, and the back of the box gives a short description of the features specific to this product. With 39 logos on the back alone, there's a lot to cover, and ECS makes it all easy to decipher. Opening the lid of the box reveals a layer of black internal packaging, with a "Black Series" logo staring back at you, reminding that this isn't just another standard board.


With the inner cardboard out of the way, we are greeted by the board itself, carefully clad in an antistatic bag with a layer of pink closed-cell foam under the back of the board, to provide some protection while shipping. Below that we find some other goodies; first the manual and a quick install guide, and then the included cables and such below another layer of cardboard, put there to prevent the box candy from coming into contact with the board during shipping. The design appears to have a fair bit of thought put into it, a theme we hope continues on to the board itself.