ASRock H55M-LE Motherboard Review

👤by David Mitchelson  Comments 📅19-10-10

Closer Look

First off, lets take a quick look at the I/O panel. Here we have PS2 support for keyboards, and on the same unit 2xUSB2 ports. With regards to graphics support the H55M-LE comes with onboard VGA socket and an onboard DVI connector. Moving along, there are a further 4xUSB2 ports and a single RJ45 that provides Gigabit LAN connectivity. Next to this we have the audio input/output sustained by the VIA VT1718S chipset.

The I/O panel on the motherboard

Looking at the CPU region there are plenty of capacitors and phases. The H55M-LE requires the 4-pin power connector and in the image below you can see the dual CPU mounting holes for attaching LGA1156/LGA1366 CPU coolers.

CPU Phase/power and 4-pin power connector

Dual channel is the LGA1156's forte, so the H55M-LE comes with two blue dual channel DDR3 slots that will host up to 2600+ (OC) memory. As with most motherboards the 24-pin connector socket is positioned right next to the DDR3 sockets.

Dual channel DDR3 - up to 2600+(OC)

Further down the board there are just 4 SATA-II ports each supporting 3 Gb/s transfer rate. This should be enough for those wanting to build a HTCP. This board doesn't support RAID though. Immediately above the SATA ports is the heatsink that is placed onto the H55 chip for PCH. Resetting the CMOS on the H55M-LE requires the traditional method of moving a jumper around.

There are two fan header 4-pin sockets on the H55M-LE. This is not including the CPU fan header of course. These two sockets are position at the very bottom of the board and at the very top (near the CPU socket). Beside the fan header at the bottom of the board are two USB headers that will supply USB2.0 functionality.

SATA ports, heatsink for H55 and USB headers

Lastly the expansion sockets. Here we have 2 legacy PCI slots, a single PCI-e x1 and a PCI-e 16x slot (blue) for high-end graphics solutions. It goes without saying the H55M-LE is certainly equipped for high-end usage. In the proceeding pages I will be observing the board through a series of benchmarks.