XFX MB-X58I-CH19 Motherboard Review :: XFX MB-X58I-CH19 Layout

The CPU area is clear of obstacles, meaning that after market cooling solutions can be used in conjunction with the LGA-1366 CPUs. There is a heatsink covering the MOSFETs with a heatpipe leading into the X58 Northbridge then another heatpipe leading to the ICH10R Southbridge chip. Under the NB heatsink are six DIMM slots that support up to 12GB of DDR3-1333MHz memory.

The main attraction of the X58 chipset aside from support of the new Intel CPUs is the ability to run Crossfire or SLI multiple graphics solutions, depending on whether you have two or three ATI or NVIDIA cards. To facilitate this, there are three PCI Express x16 Generation 2.0 slots on the board. Due to limited time I didn't test it in 3-way SLI or Crossfire. Also on the board are a single PCI Express x1 slot and two PCI slots. There are capacitors on the middle PCI slot that might block users from doing Triple-SLI with GTX280 or a few other NVIDIA cards due to a plastic tab on the bottom of those cards.

Drive expansion on the board consists of the standard 6 SATA ports that are supported by the ICH10R Southbridge chip. XFX chose to position them sideways to the board so the SATA ports will not interfere with the installation of video cards as most motherboards tend to do. Next to the SATA ports is the IDE port. The left side of the board has the FDD port.

This board has three USB 2.0 headers supporting up to six additional USB ports in addition to the six found on the back panel IO. Next to the three USB headers are the Power and Reset buttons, meaning that you can install the motherboard outside of a case. There is an onboard LED that shows problems with the motherboard components if one is encountered. The Front Panel connections are next to those buttons, followed by a Firewire port, the BIOS jumper, the System Fan and a COM header. Why a COM header is needed on an X58 chipset motherboard today is beyond me.

The onboard sound is based upon the ALC888 CODEC that has been around for several years now. Onboard sound has all but taken over for the discrete sound found on cards like the Creative Labs X-Fi series of sound cards. The ALC888 allows up to 7.1+2 channel independent sound simultaneously and is fully compliant with the High Definition Audio standard. Realtek has released several newer chipsets but the 888 is still excellent for onboard sound.

The rear IO on the board has a single PS/2 port for those that need either a PS/2 mouse or keyboard. If you still have a PS/2 mouse it is probably a good time to go for that Wireless or USB mouse and use the PS/2 port for the keyboard if you still have one of those. The rest of the I/O includes 6 USB 2.0 ports, a Firewire port, two external SATA ports, two Gigabit Ethernet ports controlled by two Marvell PHYs, a SPDIF Out and Coaxial port and six jacks for the onboard audio and a Clear CMOS button.