EVGA X58 FTW3 Core i7 Extreme SLI Motherboard Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2011-05-08
·
1,495 words · ~7 min read
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So today we're going to be having a look at a motherboard from EVGA so this is
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part of their refreshed series of x58
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board so this is the x58 for the win
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three and the three means a couple of things we'll get into that a little bit
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more later first of all like I said this is an x58 board that means it supports
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all Intel Core i7 processors both in the extreme and regular variety so four cor
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six cores you name it it uses the x58 express chipset and is NVIDIA SLI as as
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well as AMD Crossfire ready on the back
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we're going to find an outline of the various features that it includes but I
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actually don't need this list I'm going to go ahead and figure that out as we go
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along because motherboards are not that
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difficult for me I've done quite a few motherboard unboxings over the last
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little while so uh I like to think I know my way around a
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motherboard I like to think anyway I could be wrong it's happened before it's
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happened a lot of times if you follow my videos um anyway here we go first thing
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we find when we open up the box is a little note from EVGA EVGA says please
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note if your product is not working properly do not return to the store evj
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offers Direct customer service you can call us here and that will be a good
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thing whoa everything's spilling out
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hold on I got it I got it okay so what we're going to find inside in terms of
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accessories we find a little x58 for the
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win 3 motherboard layout thing ofama
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along with a quick start guide tells us how to install a graphics card
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how to install a CPU RAM power supply all that good stuff covers the basics
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you got full color there oh yeah and it's even got sort of some more uh
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detailed stuff on the back so how to plug things into the back how to plug in
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your front uh case switches good stuff
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all right next we have an EVGA sticker EVGA 3-way SLI sticker cool so I guess
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this board supports three-way SLI that was easy that's maybe that's part of the
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for the win 3 all right next we've got motherboard installation guide so that's
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sort of a more book shaped version of the other one we just looked up all
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right in terms of cables we have Molex to SATA power cables we have six SATA
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data cables and then we have an IDE cable so from there we can uh presume
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that the board does support IDE we also have a USB fire wire PCI back bracket we
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have a three-way SLI Bridge
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we have a two-way SLI Bridge that's a floppy bridge this is a PCB inflexible
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Bridge we have a IO
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cover all right and finally we have a disc that you should throw
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away next we have the motherboard itself
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which looks oh man EVGA does such a great job of the Aesthetics of their
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boards just phenomenal smells like fresh motherboard
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too if you guys know what I'm talking about please please leave a comment
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under the video saying that you also appreciate the smell of fresh
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motherboard because it's very noticeable okay why don't we start up here we'll
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start at the top left so first thing we've got is our 8 Pin CPU power
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connector we have only one on this board although that's not to say that the
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board can't provide a whole lot of juice to the CPU we've got 1 2 3 four we've
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got what appears to be 8 plus 2phase power delivery to the CPU and one of the
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things that I noticed right away about this board is that the CPU is located um
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not quite in not as much in the center but very high up near the top edge of
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the board so you're going to want to watch out if you have a top mounted power supply and a very large heat sink
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you might actually get a little bit of interference going on there so watch out
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for that although it does have quite a spacious area around the socket so if
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you're installing a big cooler and you don't have something like right here
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above your board you should be just fine we've got support for six DDR3 dims so
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that's a triple Channel memory up to 24
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gigs lots and lots of memory supported by this particular board then we've got
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our 24 pin power connector and its ideal location along the right hand edge of
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the board and moving down we have an IDE connector as well as here's another
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reason it's called three that is a SATA 3 6 gbit pers second pair of ports so
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there's two SATA 3 6 gig per second ports and then six SATA 2 3 gbit per
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second ports right there here we have a couple of really are those USB wow but
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they're red very strange okay we have red USB headers we have a South Bridge
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heat sink as well as a North Bridge heat sink which is looks like it's made up of
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a couple different components so there's a bit of an underplate here that's using
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like a black anodized finish and then we've got some nice big fins here that
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look like man there's got to be some way to install a fan on there but it looks
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like the board is passively cooled by default coming from EVGA so I guess if
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it can run that way then awesome so much the better we've got our front
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connectors here for the power LEDs all that good stuff we got a couple fans and
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I'll show you all the fans in a minute cuz it looks like this board the board's a lot of fans next we've got a clear
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seos button here although there's another one on the back rendering this one pretty much useless we also have
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integrated power and reset switches as well as lots of PCIe expansion slots
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we've got a total of four PCI E slots
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two PCI slots so you can run up to three-way SLI although if you do run
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three-way SLI and you're running dual Slot Cards and if you're running three-way SLI you better be running dual
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Slot Cards if you're running three-way SLI with dual Slot Cards you won't be
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able to install anything else however if you are running two-way SLI then you
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will have access either to an additional PCI e6x or PCI or an additional PCI 16x
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and an additional PCI so here we go 3 PCI E 16x 2 PCI one PCI e1x although the
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odds of being able to access that one are pretty slim given you probably have
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a dual slot graphic card here okay what else is there to say
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about this let's look at the back oh I like this you know what it's little
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touches that some guys do right and some guys don't on the back of the board look
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at this screws okay these are spring-loaded screws mounting the South
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Bridge heat sink the North Bridge heat sink which is up here as well as the
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mosfet heat sink nice little touch because we're not using Cheapo push pins
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we're using something that's going to stick something that's going to last and
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also something that can be easily removed if you want to take the whole thing off and mount a water block on it
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say for example if you were into that sort of things okay so let's have a look
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at the back of the board where we are going to find the final three thing that
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is USB 3.0 so we have two USB 3 ports we
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have eight USB 2 ports one PS2 keyboard
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port a clear seimos I'm at a loss for this one so
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I'll be back in a second uh and then we also have 2 GB Ethernet ports one fire
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wire as well as 7.1 audio
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sorry guys that's the evbot connector so
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uh sorry about that anyway thank you for checking out the unboxing of the EVGA
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x58 for the win 3 from EVGA don't forget
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to subscribe to Linus Tech tips for lots more videos unboxing motherboards and
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