EVGA P55 Classified 200 Motherboard Sneak Peek

by Marco Chiappetta — Friday, September 18, 2009, 06:27 PM EDT

We have shown you a myriad of P55-based motherboards over the last few months and featured a trio of high-end offerings in our coverage of the official Lynnfield launch from a couple of weeks back. The latest P55-based motherboard to hit the HotHardware labs, the EVGA P55 Classified 200, differentiates itself from every other P55-based mobo we've seen with a host of unique features.

A few of the features that make the EVGA P55 Classified 200 so interesting are its 10-phase digital VRM, gold-infused CPU socket, its expansion slot configuration, and the board's myriad of overclocking / tweaking related options.

As you can see, the EVGA P55 Classified 200 is built around a dark colored PCB with black and read accents. There is a large heatsink covering the digital VRM and a smaller EVGA-braded heatsink on the chipset itself. A third heatsink rests atop the nForce 200 PCIe switch that enables the board's expansion slot configuration.

EVGA P55 Classified 200 Motherboard, Click Images For Larger View

You'll also notice if you look closely around the CPU socket area, that the EVGA P55 Classified 200 has mounting holes for both LGA775 and LGA1156 compatible coolers--should come in handy for upgraders. There are other unique touches almost everywhere you look around this board though. For example, the LED POST code error reporter doubles as a CPU temperature sensor once the system has fully booted, there are a bank of jumpers to disable PCIe lanes, there are power, reset, and clear CMOS buttons right on-board, and an additional clear CMOS button in the I/O backplane.

The CPU socket itself is also home to a couple of cool features. For one, the socket's gold content is 300% higher than most other boards for better electrical conductivity. And Low Inductance Ceramic Capacitors (LICC) are used in the socket for increased efficiency. The EVGA P55 Classified 200 also sports three BIOS EPROMS, and a switch that gives users the ability to choose between them, should users want to save different profiles, or even experiment with multiple BIOS revisions.

At the upper edge of the board, just behind the DIMM slots, EVGA has also incorporated something it calls "Show Volt". For lack of a better explanation, the Show Volt feature is essentially an integrated volt meter--the LED screen will read-out voltages probed from the contact pads along the top edge of the board. Of course, the board's all PCI Express slot configuration, with 6 physical x16 slots (5 x PCIe x16 / x8, 1 x PCIe x4, 1 x PCIe x1) is also unique amongst other P55s.

This board still has more to offer, namely EVGA ECP V2 and EVBot controllers, but we'll have to save some details for the full review. For now, enjoy the preview, and stay tuned to HH for more in the coming weeks.

Tags: core i7, evga, Motherboard, overclock, Mobo, Core i5, LGA1156, P55

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com