Motherboard manufacturers have bent over backwards recently in their support of the X58 chipset which is the only one on the market to support Intel's Core i7 CPUs. Each major motherboard manufacturer has released multiple models of motherboards based upon this chipset. One of the issues with the X58 chipset until very recently has been the cost of each motherboard. Boards ranged in price from $250+ until very recently, meaning the cost of a new system with a new Core i7 CPU would be prohibitive with hundreds of dollars the minimum cost for that combination.
ASRock was founded as a spin-off of ASUS Corporation to release mainstream motherboards with lesser prices but high quality without the ASUS name by one of the co-founders of ASUS, Ted Shu. Recently I reviewed their high-end X58 Supercomputer board which had four PCI Express slots. Today I'm reviewing the ASRock X58 Extreme motherboard which is the first EUP compatible motherboard in the world and is targeted for a lower end of the price spectrum with three PCI Express slots. This should be an interesting review as this board has not really been released to the public as of yet.
