Linus Tech Tips Blog » X58

Gigabyte X58A-OC Overclocking Motherboard Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips

Tue, 24 May 2011 11:21:54 +0000

www.ncix.com This board is designed purely for overclocking. No extra fluff, just performance.

ASUS Rampage III Extreme Black Edition Gaming Motherboard Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips

Mon, 11 Apr 2011 09:36:03 +0000

www.ncix.com By POPULAR demand, here is the Rampage III Extreme Black Edition from ASUS. It includes Xonar sound, an Bigfoot Networks Killer NIC networking!

Gigabyte X58A-UD7 Core i7 X58 SLI Motherboard Unboxing & First Look

Linus — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 01:31:51 +0000

Forgot to write a description for this. I didn’t actually mean to make it public, but YouTube fails. I wanted to fix the black borders before making it visible to everyone. I guess it’s out there now so I might as well leave it.

eVGA X58 3X SLI Motherboard Video Product Spotlight

Linus — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 20:28:44 +0000

Well I had a chance to finally see one of these rare beasts in person. These boards were rare as hen’s teeth on launch, and the situation is finally starting to look a little bit better, at least in Canada.

There’s a lot of buzz around this board both because it’s eVGA’s first non-nVidia motherboard, and because some of the early overclocking results with it looked VERY impressive. We go over the included accessories and features with an emphasis on what eVGA’s engineering team has done to make this board great for PC enthusiasts.

ECS X58 Motherboard Marketing Effort….. F-

Linus — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 19:52:08 +0000

The messaging on ECS’s web site *should* make you think of high performance computing, overclocking, reliability, etc.

After seeing this banner though, the first things that came to my mind were ebony pornography and racist hate-speech!

It gets better though. Here you can view the “Black Adventure” flash video. Guaranteed to make you laugh.

http://www.ecs.com.tw/extra/x58_campaign/global/00-flash.html

Maybe a couple of review sample boards to key websites would have been a better investment, hm?

Gigabyte EX58-EXTREME – Suitable for Water Cooling?

Linus — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 06:52:50 +0000

My quest for a suitable X58 platform began with the requirement for SLI compatibility. All of the high end X58 boards I’ve seen so far have that checkbox filled. The next big requirement was slot layout. Currently I’m using two dual slot water cooled graphics cards (no desire to go full cover at this time), a PCI sound card (that can go as I’m only using it for mic in with an optical connection to my Onkyo TX-SR605), a PCIe 1x Intel gigabit NIC, and I’d really like to upgrade to a PCIe 8x RAID card in the near future.

Gigabyte really FUBARed the slot layout of the EX58-EXTREME with that weird heatsink that attaches to the northbridge… It blocks the top PCIe 1x and the PCIe 4x slot… But at least you can remove it. Boards like the Foxconn Blood Rage and the ASUS P6T, although appealing, simply won’t accommodate my expansion needs. The P6T Deluxe layout I just don’t understand… Why put the two bottom PCIe 16x slots next to each other?

The Gigabyte board has everything I need: Dual PCIe 16x physical with another that is electrically only 8x for a RAID card (3Ware tech I was talking to today says a lot of consumer boards will not properly work with an 8x card in a 16x electrical slot…). It also has a very robust cooling solution. Above you can see the naked board as well as a shot of how it’s attached to the board from the underside.

Here you can see the integrated water cooling solution with 3/8″ ID 5/8″ OD Primochill tubing on it. It fits great and these barbs are surprisingly good quality for an integrated affair. Gigabyte recommends 1/2″ OD tubing though and you can see the reason for it. With the Extreme Heatpipe dealie installed, 5/8″ OD tubing is a tight fit.

I was a little disappointed with the overall fit and finish of the water cooling solution. It does appear to be ALL copper (kudos to Gigabyte), and the base appears very flat and shiny, but the finish on the actual northbridge heatpipe assembly is VERY rough and not flat at all. I can’t imagine it will make very good contact, especially without thermal compound over the whole thing. That said, it’s good enough for my purposes and I’m not looking to set any world records.

eVGA gives a sneak peek at their new X58 motherboard

Linus — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 01:12:33 +0000

Well based on my previous experience with eVGA motherboards (two of which I’m still using right now) and eVGA tech support, I can say with confidence that an eVGA engineered product is likely to be AT LEAST as good as what anyone else else puts out. Without further ado, here’s the press release:

EVGA is proud to show a sneak peak of a new motherboard based on the Intel(R) X58 Express Chipset, supporting the upcoming Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 processor. The EVGA X58 SLI FTW motherboard will feature 6 DIMMs of triple-channel DDR3 memory, and a board layout optimized for the enthusiast including 2-way and 3-way SLI support. EVGA VDroop control minimizes VDroop for the highest level of stability possible and EVGA E-LEET Tuning Utility gives you the power to Overclock at your fingertips. With these features and more, it is no wonder EVGA products currently hold the top 3DMark Vantage Performance Record! Product will be available in November 2008.

EVGA X58 SLI FTW Motherboard Features:

Supports Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 Processors
Intel(R) X58 Express Chipset with the ICH10R
EVGA VDroop Control
100% Solid State Capacitors
6 DIMM triple-channel DDR3
Enthusiast layout supporting 2-way, 3-way SLI and CrossFireX
10 SATA II 3.0GB/s ports (1 e-SATA)
EVGA E-LEET Tuning Utility