eVGA's Upcoming X58 Board Promises to Scream "High-End"

Rob Williams

Editor-in-Chief
Staff member
Moderator
From our front-page news:
One cool surprise at CES that I didn't expect to see was eVGA's upcoming high-end X58 motherboard, one that might do well to compete with the likes of ASUS, Gigabyte and others in that arena. Although I don't recall the name of this board (there might not have been one), it's designed for hardcore gamers, enthusiasts and overclockers, plain and simple.

The first thing you might notice is the superb color scheme. It doesn't feature a hundred different colors, but two... black and red. Small aesthetic touches have been taken as well, such as black metal being used where able. Apparently, it's really complicated to use black metal for the back I/O ports, so sadly, they remain stock.


This board was built for high-end gamers, and the layout of the PCI-E slots prove it. With this configuration, someone would be able to go with tri-SLI, with say, NVIDIA's new GTX 285's, and then still have a PCI-E slot free for use with a smaller GPU, such as an 8800 GT, for dedicated PhysX use. This is a great ability, but it goes without saying that you'll want some superb airflow in your chassis.

Other features include a very robust heatsink on both the northbridge and PWM area, eight-phase power solution, included high-end audio (X-Fi, but unsure if it includes the real chip), two SLI bridges (depending on what configuration you are going with), and also an external piece of PCB that contains power buttons and other various switches, including a BIOS status LED. This doesn't have to be used with a simple GPU solution, but if you plan on topping the board out, like it suggests, this add-on will assure you'll lose none of the functionality at the bottom of the board.


This board is set to be launched within the next few months and will retail for around ~$450. It's pricey, so it won't be for everyone, but it's great to see eVGA pushing their motherboard development so hard. They admit that their launch X58 board was a little rushed out the door due to time-constraints, but they've really spent some hard time with the design of this one. I can't wait to see what it can muster - besides a very, very warm room, of course.
 

Babrbarossa

Obliviot
Rumor was that this beast ("X58 sli Classified") was going to be released at the end of February, but like alot of things lately (my wife is still grumpy about sims3), it's been delayed. Not by much though- apparently second week of March.

It will run 3X sli plus a physX GPU and it has PCI-e slot jumpers for ease of trouble shooting on multiple card setups. A redesigned CPU power setup that is supposed to design very clean power to the CPU. Too bad I'll never be able to afford one.
 

Merlin

The Tech Wizard
Ah HA
This is the one I was waiting for, I got the MSI mobo just to get things up and running.
My Theme was Red and Black and the MSI board has little blue led lights on it.
So, when it arrives, I'll tear down the present system, the tubing should be the right lengths and all.

Kewl Board
 

Kougar

Techgage Staff
Staff member
Anandtech released a preview of this one today. Only with a fully maxed out system under 60 degree ambient water cooling was the board able to marginally pull ahead of the regular EVGA X58 SLI in OCing, and not my a significant amount.

They did make one smart observation I thought I'd pass on... unless the user has extreme water cooling or below-ambient cooling, there's no point in buying the board for better overclocks. With air cooling a user won't see a difference in overclocks between it and the regular, much cheaper EVGA X58 SLI. They would probably have better results putting the money into a higher CPU bin such as the 940 instead of the 920...
 
Top