Foxconn H55MX-S Motherboard Review

1. Introduction2. Packaging and Bundle3. The Foxconn H55MX-S Motherboard4. Testing Methodology, BIOS and Overclocking5. Synthetic: SiSoft Sandra 20116. Synthetic: 3DMark Vantage and 117. Synthetic: Cinebench R11.5 (64-bit)8. Synthetic: Super Pi Mod 1.59. Synthetic: Crystalmark and HDTach10. Real World: Media Encoding with Cyberlink MediaEspresso11. Real World: MKV Playback12. Real World: KitGuru PS Bench V1(4)13. Gaming: GTA IV: Episodes from Liberty City14. Closing Thoughts15. View All Pages

We decided to use the Intel Core i5 750 processor for testing today as it’s perfect for use in a media system and overclocks well.  In our test rig, this is combined with a CoolIT Vantage A.L.C. which has more than enough cooling power to keep the chip at a reasonable temperature when overclocked.

Test System

Motherboard: Foxconn H55MX-S
CPU: Intel Core i5 750
Memory: Kingston 4GB (2x 2GB) DDR3
PSU: Antec 550W
Chassis: Enermax Hoplite
Graphics Card: HIS Radeon HD 5830 Turbo
Cooler: CoolIT Vantage A.L.C.
Thermal Paste: Arctic Cooling MX-3
Hard Drive: Kingston SSDNow V+ 128GB

Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit
3DMark Vantage
3DMark 11
Super Pi Mod 1.5
Cyberlink MediaEspresso 6
FRAPS Professional
Cinebench R10
Cinebench R11.5
VLC Media Player
KitGuru Photoshop Benchmark 1(4)
Grand Theft Auto 4: EFLC

All the latest BIOS updates and WHQL drivers are used during testing. We perform under real world conditions, meaning KitGuru test all games across five closely matched runs and average out the results to get an accurate median figure.

Foxconn use an American Megatrends BIOS for the H55MX-S which is actually extremely lacking in configurable settings.  Those who hope to overclock the system will be sorely disappointed as the only option we are able to change is the multiplier which can only be adjusted downwards.

So to overclock the system we are forced to use the software utility that Foxconn include with the motherboard.  Like the Asus motherboards we looked at recently, this has an Auto OC function.  This didn't initially work on our system, causing the system to crash when it reached a base clock of 150Mhz.  The second time we tried it, it also crashed but, on resume, it recommended a base clock of 140MHz which was applied without any issue.

This increased the overall clock speed of the processor to 2.80GHz, only 140MHz away from the stock clock speed.  We tried overclocking the system manually but weren't able to achieve a higher overclock than the Auto OC function which is really quite poor considering we've managed 4.00GHz with this exact chip using the similar Gigabyte H55M-UD2 motherboard.

We've taken photographs of all the BIOS screens for those who are interested.  These are displayed below.

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