The dark satanic rumour mill has churned out an interesting rumour on an upcoming refresh of P55 boards.

Motherboard makers are apparently readying a new generation of P55 boards with USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gb/s support. The move isn't very surprising, as many punters complained about the lack of SATA 6 on recently introduced P55 boards. However, nobody complained about P55 board prices, which are surprisingly affordable at the moment.

Obviously there's plenty of room for slightly pricier, future-proof incarnations of existing P55 board designs. With USB 3.0 and SATA 6 devices starting to appear soon, there's no doubt there will be plenty of demand for such boards, in spite of somewhat higher prices. The extra cost will simply buy you peace of mind.

Bear in mind that the P55 doesn't have enough bandwidth to fully utilize the benefits of USB 3.0 and SATA 6, but the expected performance boost is still significant.

Obviously, X58 boards which can harness the new standards without a performance penalty, will also be beefed up with USB 3.0 and SATA 6.

Of course, motherboard makers already envisioned the upgrades while they were designing current boards, so adding the new features should be a breeze. However, some companies will take an even simpler route. They will simply bundle PCIe x4 cards with a couple of USB 3.0 ports, and presto, you'll be able to try out your new USB 3.0 hardware in no time.

The allure of adding USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gb/s stickers on motherboard boxes, thus making them quite a bit more appealing, will probably prompt vendors to speed up their upgrade efforts. Unfortunately, we still don't know when the new boards are supposed to appear on the market.