Foxconn H55A review

Foxcon’s H55A is a budget LGA1156 ATX motherboard. It doesn’t have any of the latest features, such as USB3 or SATA III but its size means it has more expansion options that the MicroATX boards we’re used to seeing at this price.

Four RAM slots can each take a 4GB DDR3 DIMM to a maximum of 16GB and can handle overclocked RAM at speeds up to 2,000MHz. A single PCI-E x16 slot can be used for a graphics card if you don’t want to use an Intel processor’s onboard graphics, while three PCI and three PCI-E x1 slots give you plenty of room for peripherals. However, a dual-slot graphics card will block the top PCI-E x1 slot.

Other onboard connectors include three USB headers, six SATA II ports and an IDE connector. At the back, you’ll find a pair of eSATA ports and six USB ports. The VIA onboard audio processor has 7.1 analogue audio out via six stereo outputs, while the integrated graphics capabilities of Intel’s LGA1156 processors can be used via the HDMI and DVI ports.

The H55A’ss overall benchmark score of 129 is a slight bit disappointing and we’ve seen boards with this chipset score a fair bit higher. Although this is a full ATX board, we expected better performance for £75, particularly in the face of competition. As such, Gigabyte’s GA-H55M-S2 microATX board is both faster and cheaper.