eVGA H55V LGA1156 Core i3 Motherboard Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2010-05-08
·
1,230 words · ~6 min read
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so I haven't looked at many EVGA boards lately but I thought why not so I'm
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going to have a look today at the EVGA h55 V this is an h55 motherboard that
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means it's compatible with all core I3 Core i5 and core i7 processors on LGA
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1156 so what that means though is that
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not all of the features are necessarily compatible with the processors so if you
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are running say for example a core I3
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dual core processor you will be able to run Onboard video if you're running a
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core i5 quad core or a core i7 on this
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particular motherboard the Onboard video won't work you'll have to install an
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addin graphics card so a little bit more on that shortly EVGA first of all
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includes a huge visual guide to your new motherboard I love these I think that
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they're a really nice touch they give you a full size picture like actual size
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picture of the motherboard where they label all of the important components
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and they also give you some quick instructions on how to do the various
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things you might have to do so you can see the well okay we're not going to
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look at the picture for too long because obviously we have a real motherboard
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here that we could look at instead so once I get this opened up I will
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definitely have a closer look at all the different features next we find an IO
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Shield okay fairly runof-the-mill IO Shield next Inside the Box we find two
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black straight SATA cables so either of
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these are right angle something to note about the EVGA SATA cables is one end
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features a lock and the other end has no lock so the Locking end is intended to
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go into your motherboard they also include a Molex to two SATA power
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connectors and these have a lock on them that's something I haven't seen before
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it's there's actually a little lever there that you press interesting yeah
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I've never seen that before then we have a USB PCI bracket next we have a driver
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CD do not use it download the latest drivers off the the EVGA website next we
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have the EVGA h55 V motherboard installation guide so installing the CPU
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the CPU fan the system memory the io shield and securing the motherboard into
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the system case they also cover all the power connectors you'll have to
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configure as well as the front panel connectors for things like uh the case
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power case reset all that kind of stuff
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all right so let's get this board out and this is another one of my favorite
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things about EVGA boards and I'm going to break the
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suspense in just a moment as soon as I get the board out of the bag this thing
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please read before CPU installation that is the funniest thing ever step one and
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step two and step three and step four so
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they actually give you all the instructions to install your CPU in such
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a way that you cannot possibly even attempt it without reading the
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instructions so like all h55 motherboards we've we've got support for
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dual Channel DDR3 memory we have an LGA
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1156 socket here they are I can't tell what brand of socket they're using so I
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guess we won't get too much further into that power connectors are in their
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almost optimal locations we've got the 24 pin here but the four pins kind of in
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no man's land all over here something to note though because this is a microatx
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motherboard the odds of it being a bad thing for the four pin power to be here
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are much less because many microatx cases don't actually have conventional
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layouts in terms of where the motherboard and the power supply goes so it's quite possible you won't run into
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any problems with that now there is one that is a bit of a problem I don't
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really like the layout of the SATA ports because the PCI Express connector here
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if you have a dual slot card is actually going to potentially cover these three
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ports and make it difficult to access them that said this is a fairly low-end
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board so if you're installing an add-in graphics card you're probably not
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putting in a super high-end long one so for most people it's probably going to
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be a non-issue like I said before SATA ports so we've got five here down at the
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bottom USB headers there are plenty there are 1 2 3 4 USB headers and they
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are colorcoded bright pink so that you can find them very easily next we've got
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the chipset and the h55 chipset obviously doesn't produce a whole lot of
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heat you've got this little tiny heat sink on it not a whole lot going on in
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there I think next we've got expansion so you've got one Legacy PCI slot one
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PCI 1X slot one PCIe 4X slot and one
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PCIe 16x Graphics slot I wouldn't have minded seeing those switched around so
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that you can use a graphics card and the 4ex slot but really there aren't too
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many add-in cards that go into a 4X slot these days so I wouldn't worry too much
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about it this appears to be front panel audio and then I guess that pretty much
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does it for the top side of the board
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let me see if there's anything else
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noteworthy oh I have never seen something that looks
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like this before there this is totally irrelevant and I don't know what it does
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but I've never seen one of these on a motherboard before that is all let's go
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around to the back panel so you've got two PS2 ports one for the mouse one for
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the keyboard and let's get a little bit more into this Onboard video issue
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you've got a VGA port a DVI port and an HDMI port now unless you're using a core
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I3 or a core i5 dual core and please
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note that I'm grouping in the Pentium dual core LGA 1156 with the core I3 LGA
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1156 all of those feature Onboard video
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on the CPU so that means that all it is is a pass through from the CPU's Onboard
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video to these ports so unless you're using a CPU with Onboard video they're
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just dead ports for decoration you can plug something into them but they won't
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do anything next we have four USB ports
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that's not a lot of USB ports for a for an h55 motherboard but I mean you can
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always use a hub it's not that big of a deal you've got a gigabit Ethernet port
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one ESAT Port that's really nice to see on such an entry-level board and then
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you got 7.1 audio thanks for checking out my quick unboxing and product
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overview of the EVGA h55 V