ASUS P6X58D-E Core i7 Extreme Crossfire SLI Motherboard Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2011-05-08
·
1,754 words · ~8 min read
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so today I'll be doing a quick unboxing of a board from ASUS this is the p6x 58d
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E so let's get quickly zoomed in here
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and I've got my camera propped on my makeshift cardboard cat tree which my
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cat is now exploring this may end badly
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if I do not end the video now no he's leaving the camera alone that works okay
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so this is part of their updated x58 board so you can tell because there's a
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d at the end that stands for USB 3.
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which they are calling out here as true USB 3.0 as well as true SATA 6 GB perss
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so then we've also got support for 16 plus 2phase power as well as SLI and
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Crossfire it is an LGA 1366 motherboard
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so that means you've got support for all Intel's core i7 and core i7 extreme CPUs
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on that socket and then you can see this is also an extreme design board so that
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means that isus is going for number one reliability performance and safety here
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let's move around to the back of the board now true USB 3.0 and true SATA 6
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GB pers second ASUS is calling that out because of the unique way that they have
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uh been able to deliver the bandwidth required by those Technologies now ASUS
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uses a uh a chip to split the PCI eanes
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to make sure that even if you're running SLI or Crossfire they will get
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all the bandwidth that they need so three-way SLI quad GPU Crossfire X
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that's all good and fine 100% long life
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solid capacitors they've also got their stat cool 3 plus technology stat cool
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just means lots of copper in the PCB allows it to dissipate heat more easily
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and they're calling it a unique layout I guess we'll have to have a look and see what I think of their unique layout as
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well as Precision tweaker 2 software so let's get the board opened up here and
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you can see that once I remove the outer sleeve it looks exactly the same cool
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okay moving my mouse out of the way turn my monitor off here let's get this board
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opened up and have a look at the accessories that are included the cat is
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eating Jonathan fatality Wendell's RAM
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so I'm going to go ahead and move that out of his way okay first of all we have
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an IO Shield it uses ASUS's puffy shiny
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back but it is not color coded next we have the users guide which also has a
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driver and utilities DVD in here don't use this download the latest off the
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assus website there's also a little powered by AE sticker very nice okay the
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manual itself is in uh all English so it's quite a thick
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manual it gives you some details on the bio some details on the physical layout
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of your board all of that good stuff now I may have actually made a mistake when
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I said um that they needed a bridge chip to get full USB 3.0 and sta 6 gbit per
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second so I'm going to correct myself now that's only on ASUS's p55 boards not
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on their x58 boards with x58 there are more PCIe lanes and it is not necessary
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so in the as far as the SATA cables go ASUS is included four SATA 2 cables okay
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so two of them are right angle and two of them are straight connector and then
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they've also included two uh SATA 6
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gabit per second cables now I use the finger quotes because really they're
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exactly the same thing but these ones are white and black and all cool looking
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so I would use those if it was up to me next we have a three-way SLI Bridge as
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well as a regular flexible SLI bridge
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then we've also got an empty baggie
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which probably contained a 3-way SLI bridge at some point but I guess it came
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out during shipping just goes to show you shipping like anything can happen in
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shipping I've seen some weird stuff okay and then we have their Q connector so if
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you can you can hook up your front panel connectors as well as your USB to those
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and then plug those right into the motherboard now let's get the board
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out and see what we have in store here
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so I'm just going to close this box so that I can uh get a good look at this
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for you here all right let's get the baggie
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open I love motherboards because the way
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they package it makes it really easy for me to remove it from the BLX it's very
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nice there's no seals no nothing it's all very very simple that way okay so
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let's have a look at the layout of this board first of all in the very center I'm just going to zoom in a touch here
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for you so that you can see a little bit better almost as well as I can all right
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there we go so in the center we will find our LGA 1366 socket it is is a Loz
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socket not a foxcon socket for those of you who care unless you know what I'm
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referring to you probably don't care so don't worry about it we've got nice
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beefy looking vrm coolers here I mean they're not huge but what they are is
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they're efficient looking so they're just a simple fin design on both sides
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okay so you can see this one's actually attached via a heat pipe to the North
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Bridge cooler here and then there is no heat pipe moving over to the South
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Bridge but that's not really necessary the South Bridge here the I10 R does not
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put out a whole lot of heat next of all we have the 8 Pin uh CPU power connector
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up at its ideal location at the top left then we have support for triple Channel
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DDR3 memory populate the blue slots first now this is actually something
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that I've never mentioned before although it's present on uh as far as I
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know every x58 board the primary channels that you're going to populate
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are always the ones that are further away from the CPU and the reason for
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that is because there are many large CPU coolers these days
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and most customers only buy one triple Channel kit in the lifetime of the board
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so the manufacturers have cleverly made the primary channels the ones further
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away so it gives you that one extra slot if you have high-profile memory that you
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can use to populate that space with your cooler so there you go there's your
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tidbit for the day we have a memo button here so that means that it'll set any
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memory in here to very very default
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timing so that you can make sure you can post even with high performance sticks
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uh here we've got a oh we've got standard RAM Clips that's interesting so
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normally on ausa's boards they have only a one-sided RAM clip but it looks like
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we've actually got Clips on both sides on this board not sure why they've made
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that change we've got a 24 pin power connector in its ideal location along
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the right hand edge of the board and moving down the board we have the
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Southbridge stream phase then we oh okay here we go here it gets gets more
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interesting again so the top ones the two gray ports here those are say to 6
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gbit per second running off of a Marvel
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chipset here these two right here the powder blue ones are a
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SATA oh man sorry my cats are playing
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with the bag and they're probably going to destroy it anyway okay so these are
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SATA 2 next we have overvolt Dam bus and
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overw qpi dram jumpers so I wish I knew
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exactly what those are please leave a comment if you know exactly what those jumpers are for then down here at the
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bottom we've got two more SATA two ports here we have our front panel connectors
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and then we've got a couple of USB 2.0 front headers and then moving right
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along we've got an onboard power switch that's the biggest one I mean a lot of
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Manufacturers include like onboard power onboard uh speaker onboard reset but the
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power is the big one I do like seeing an onboard seos clear but that one's
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actually on the back IO Shield of this board so that's even better okay so PCI
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Express slot layout first of all we've got our two PCI e6x slots these are
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going to be our two blue primary ones and if you populate both of those with a
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dual slot graphics card you will be left with one PCIe 16x slot and one PCIe 1X
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slot I don't mind seeing both of the PCI slots covered on a board like this
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because let's face it if you're buying a high-end x58 board you're loading in two
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graphics cards you don't need PCI slots you should probably have PCIe updated
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PCIe addin cards so that brings us right
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around to the very back of the board where we've got our IO Shield so you got
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two PS2 ports you know I'm still not done with PS2 personally I find that
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when you're trying to get into the BIOS or sometimes when you're installing applications USB keyboards don't always
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get recognized I love having PS2 ports available to me then we have a clear SEO
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switch right here two USB 3.0 ports optical audio out coax seal audio out
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digital both then we have four USB 2.0 ports one fire wire Port gigabit
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Ethernet and 7.1 audio so thank you for checking out my unboxing and first look
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at the p6x 58d
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e motherboard