Choosing the Best H55/H57 Motherboard - Part 1

MSI H55M-ED55

MSI's H55M-ED55 is priced at around $134 and should be available to purchase shortly at various online retailers.

MSI includes the Realtek ALC 889 HD audio codec, Realtek PCI-E RTL8111D Gigabit LAN, and full support for the Core i3/i5/i7 S1156 processor series. The accessories bundle is comprised of a rear I/O panel cover along with one IDE cable, two SATA cables, one SATA power cable, a CF bridge, an informative manual, quick installation guide, Winki Guide, and a software DVD that includes an HDD backup utility.

Of note in the software package is Winki. This is a Linux-based operating system similar to ASUS' ExpressGate. Unlike ExpressGate, you boot Winki off the DVD or off a USB thumb drive once it is set up. Winki includes Open Office, Photo Viewer, Instant Messaging, Web, and Skype functionality without booting into your primary OS. A quick overview of the bundled Control Center overclocking software is available here.

We've found that the revision of Control Center that ships with the H55M-ED55 has a few bugs that need attention. The main concern is misreporting of CPU PLL rail voltage, which ends up being set to 2.1V at random if you press the APPLY button after making changes to any of the other functions.

Selecting one of the overclock preset profiles in Control Center (the Cinema, Cooling, Default, and Game tabs at the top of the GUI) also results in the board either rebooting or locking up in the OS. Put simply, Control Center needs attention from MSI to bring it to an operational state. As it stands right now, we'd say you're better off not installing the software until the issues are fixed.

The Board

Board layout is generally good. Like the ASRock H55M-Pro, you get two full length x16 PCI-E slots to use for expansion purposes (there are no dual GPU configurations with Clarkdale though). Onboard power, BCLK, and OC genie buttons are provided for open test beds, although we think the BCLK buttons are a little out of place on this board given its 4-phase CPU PWM that is not suited for heavy overclocking. Over current protection should kick in at around 120 amps, so heavy load benchmarking at high processor frequencies is best avoided.

The heatsinks used for cooling do an adequate job of keeping things cool in light load conditions with minimal airflow. If you're overclocking though, be sure to install a fan in the vicinity of the heatsink to help keep things cool. The PCH heatsink does not have to dissipate a lot of heat so can be left passive without issue in normal usage conditions. On the CPU cooling front, most coolers should have no problems fitting in either orientation, provided the memory modules you use do not have tall heatspreaders when you use the primary DIMM slots.

SATA port placement is okay for the most part, although we're not sure why MSI opted to place two of the ports on the board rather than placing than at a right angle like the others. The only time this could become a problem (although an unlikely configuration) is if a user decides to run dual GPUs in the board with a Lynnfield processor, at which point access to these two ports becomes blocked. While we're on the subject of access, the CMOS battery is in a location where longer graphics cards in the primary PEG slot will hinder its removal, although you can still get to the CMOS jumper. Moving both to the lower edge of the board would have been a better location.

Overclocking

Like the other boards we're testing today, overclocking Clarkdale CPUs with BCLKs over 190MHz requires use of the 2:8 or 2:6 memory ratios. With 4GB plugged into the MSI H55M-ED55 1600MHz speeds are possible, requiring nothing more than setting the primary DRAM timings. S3 resume at these BCLK frequencies is also possible provided the system is fully stable. Move over to the 2:10 ratio and we get the same limits as we found on the ASUS P7H55D-M EVO model, falling short of achieving anything over 175BCLK (DDR3-1750MHz) fully stable. Both boards give up over 100MHz in maximum DDR3 frequency to the cheaper ASRock H55M-Pro which takes the same modules to DDR3-1880MHz with consummate ease.

If you want to run 8GB of memory you're limited to memory speeds around DDR3-1500MHz regardless of settings on the current BIOS releases. The ASUS P7H55D-M EVO manages to take the same kit over 1550MHz fully stable with tighter sub-timings and a higher QPI multiplier, while the ASRock is close behind if not more stable given its locked 24x QPI multiplier - provided you apply the loose tRFC needed on both boards at these frequencies.

A one touch automated overclocking preset is available via MSI's OC Genie button. Using this feature took our 661 CPU to a quick and easy 22X188 BCLK, providing a CPU speed of 4148MHz and a DRAM speed of DDR3-1508MHz @ 8-8-8-24 timings. Voltage increases are moderate, falling only slightly higher than what we'd have started off at ourselves. Stress testing revealed the overclock was stable too, so it's not a bad effort on MSI's part for 4GB overclocking. The same applies to 8GB configurations; you'll get exactly the same overclock and it appears the preset provides enough leeway to cater for 8GB while retaining stability. Don't write off automated overclocking if you're looking for an easy journey on this board.

BIOS

MSI's BIOS is fairly comprehensive offering granular control of voltages and a full gamut of DRAM timings within the Cell Menu. However, we've said this before and we'll say it again, the DRAM timing page needs refinement. If you open up the advanced DRAM timing menu, you're left to negotiate 11 timings on your own, making the whole process overly complex for many users. Get one of the settings wrong and you'll be greeted with a non-POST situation. OC recovery will kick in on the second reboot, though you're best advised to save a BIOS profile of safe settings to fall back on when this happens. You get four CMOS save banks for saving profiles, each of which can be named conveniently and reloaded at a later date.

The voltage ranges on offer are very granular, with plenty of room for tweaking. Strangely, you don't get any options for under-voltage of CPU Vcore, which is something you get on the other boards in this price range. It's not a complete deal breaker for us, but we know there are users out there that like to undervolt their CPUs in order to reduce heat; the MSI board does not cater for this currently.

BIOS flashing is made easy thanks to the built in M-Flash routine, so you don't have to rely on OS level software for this task. The only gripe we have is that the BIOS chip is soldered to the board. Should you end up with a corrupt BIOS, you've got no option but to send the whole board back to MSI for a fix unless you have an external flashing tool that can interface with the onboard BIOS header. The boards from ASRock and ASUS all have BIOS chips mounted in sockets, which can be swapped out without having to ship the whole board for BIOS recovery.