Asus P7H57D-V EVO Motherboard

So it seems as though the Asus P7H57D-V EVO has fared rather well across the board (pun not intended). To summarise, it allowed us to push our Core i3 530 CPU to 4.1GHz, carries a number of interesting and (for some) useful features. It has proven to be a very stable motherboard and sports more SATA/USB ports than Octopus' have legs. In terms of it's offerings, I would struggle not to recommend one to form the basis of one's next computer...if it weren't for one thing. Price.

At £150, this particular motherboard sits alongside the best of Intel P55 and AMD 790FX motherboards, budget Core i7 X58 motherboards such as the Gigabyte X58-UD3R/Asus P6T and quite alarmingly, it's almost possible to buy two Micro ATX H55 motherboards for the same price.

It raises big questions about what exactly this motherboard is trying to achieve and what it's even meant to be competing against! If someone wanted a motherboard to utilise Integrated Graphics, why would they spend this much on one? Yet, if the Integrated Graphics wasn't a requirement, then why not spend less anyway and buy a faster processor with the money saved? I'd also like to reiterate that a Core i3/i5 Dual Core processor will not support ATI Crossfire or nVidia SLI.

I could go on. It pains me to say it as I was highly appreciative about this particular motherboard but the pricing is simply too high for what it is. On that basis, the Asus P7H57D-V EVO receives no recommendation from myself, however I dare say that it's more affordable brethren are worth a serious look instead.

The Good

• - Board Layout

• - Useful utilities such as EZFlash

• - Novice oriented overclocking options

• - Overclocks reasonably well

• - SATA6G/USB3

• - Minimal Vdroop

The Mediocre

• - Dubious CAS Latency Readings

   

  The Bad

• - Price

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Thank you to Asus for supplying todays sample, you can discuss the review further in our forums.