Intel Core i7 965EE, i7 940, i7 920 Review :: Intel x58 Board features

• X58 Express Northbridge
• ICH10R IO Controller
• 4 DIMM Sockets
• Six SATA ports

DX58SO

Northbridge

Southbridge

CPU Socket

As the reference board for the Intel X58 platform, the X58SO motherboard has a plethora of features designed to keep options open for the motherboard makers to include features. The X58 Northbridge has a small heatsink/fan combination to keep it cool. Note the lack of IDE and FDD controllers on the board as Intel is moving away from legacy and towards the future with their motherboards.

Expansion

Rear of PCB

Board+Quick Setup

Bundle

One thing to note about the Intel board is the expansion options on the board. The board has two PCI Express x16 slots allowing for dual card Crossfire capability. The Intel board has a PCI Express x4 slot, a PCI Express x1 slot and a PCI slot. Installing two GTX 280s caused the system to recognize two cards but not allow SLI configuration. After consulting NVIDIA I found the motherboard DX58SO was not SLI certified meaning that SLI was not supported by the board.

DIMMs

PCI Express x1

Power button

IO

The reference board has four DIMMs meaning that it doesn't take advantage of the six available to it from the chipset. As the chipset has triple memory channel capability, the memory modules need to be installed in the blue memory sockets to get the necessary bandwidth. Other boards in the launch will have up to six memory sockets, allowing for installation of three dual memory modules to get the bandwidth advertised by Intel.