*Official* Asus P7H55-M/P7H55D-M mATX HTPC Motherboard Thread

Official Asus Page for P7H55-M PRO: http://www.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=vOvmywqPUY78qUzh

There are two other H55 variants of this board which are more expensive:
P7H55D-M PRO - http://www.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=qWmZUAdNKeozTOXb
P7H55D-M EVO - http://www.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=LZtx6p7WKTP77rsk

From what I can tell the major difference is these are based on the "Extreme" design and the EVO has a Firewire port on the back.

These are the first H55 mobo from Asus to support the new Clarksdale i3 and i5 processors.
All support USB 3.0, DDR3 up to 2133 OC, have HDMI and optical audio out the back and have PCIe x16 slots for expansion cards.

Let the discussion begin!

So I've built my first HTPC ever with this board. I chose this one for two main reasons:

1) I've build with Asus for many years
2) Fanless design should be quiet for HTPC use

I got the P7H55-M PRO from Newegg the day it was released.

I'm overall impressed with this board. Small but it doesn't feel "cramped". SATA connectors are in good spots and there are 6 of them. There are 2 fan connectors besides the CPU fan so if you have more fans you'll need to connect them to your power supply.

Only two issues that I see for some people:
1) Will only support a graphics card of 10.5 inches or so or it can interfere with the SATA ports.
2) The CPU heatsink/fan is very close to the memory slots. If you fill all 4 if you have "wide" SIMMS you may run into an issue. But if you stick with just 2, don't have massive heatsinks on your memory or choose your cpu cooler carefully you shouldn't have an issue.

I would recommend this board to anyone building a HTPC just in terms of putting it together. I will be firing it up today and installing software so I'll add more once I do that.

Below are some pictures. All my hardware for this build:

Case: SILVERSTONE GRANDIA GD04B
PSU: Antec BP550 Plus 550W
MB: ASUS P7H55-M PRO LGA 1156 Intel H55
CPU: Intel Core i3-540 Clarkdale 3.06GHz
Memory: G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600
Hard Drive: Western Digital Caviar Green 1.5 TB
Graphics: On board MB
Sound: On board MB
Blu-Ray: LG Black 8X BD-ROM

This is a very nice case by the way. I took my time to route cables and it gives several options to do so. I spent a bit more for a modular PSU but well worth it in a cramped mATX case.

WOW is this thing quiet. I just fired it up and I honestly didn't know if it was turned on or not other then then blue light on the front. I almost thought the power supply was bad and was going to reset when the BIOS screen came up. I put my ear up to it and can barely hear it. Obviously it's not under load but this is a good sign. Win 7 install forthcoming...

I'm going with the stock cooler for now and seeing how it does. If it's too loud then I'll get an aftermarket one. So far it's very quiet but I'm doing nothing more intensive then installing Win 7. The only thing noisy right now I'm seeing is the BluRay drive when it seems to go into "turbo" mode or something. I'll have to keep an eye on that and see if it does it during movie playback.

Actually I do have one, once all build I'll check it out.

Idle at the Windows desktop it's between 46 and 50 watts. Hope that is what you're looking for.

I can confirm that the power light does flash when in sleep mode. On my case it's barely noticeable and even if it was it's not a big deal to me since I'll probably never put it in sleep mode anyway. If I did I would be out of the room anyway.


My AVR does not do HDMI so I'll be HDMI directly to the TV with optical to the AVR.

That's exactly what I'll be doing. All my devices go HDMI to the TV and optical/coax for audio direct to my receiver. The TV doesn't do anything with audio.

Got most of the software configured last night and tried a BluRay I just got from Netflix, Monsters & Aliens.

Wow, the quality of the BluRay blows me away. There are no artifacts or tearing at all, smooth as silk. At least nothing I can see. So it appears that at least in my setup the onboard video is more then capable of doing BluRay and DD5.1/DTS (I have no way to do HD Audio).

I upgraded to PowerDVD 9 Ultra and playing thru 7MC.

I do have a side question, I do have a bit of overscan on the right side. I thought I saw a config somewhere in Windows or elsewhere about overscan but I can't find it now. Anyone know off the top of their head?

Nope, 60. My TV will take a 24p input will convert it to 60 for display so perhaps that why I don't see that issue as you note.

Just FYI that I got a 550W power supply. It is way more then needed but it was one of the lowest I could find that was modular. Modular is very key with smaller cases like this. Also a consideration of mine was if I needed to get a separate video card.

Which doesn't appear needed as I have played BluRay's with no problems at all. Video is perfect. Also HD OTA looks fantastic and plays back great. The only glitchy video I get is from Internet streaming at times (full screen) and I think that is mostly due the state of Flash more then anything.

I will say that the temp of the CPU is very cool. Even playing a BluRay and recording one HD OTA stream the CPU never got above 42. Very nice.