Starting in the upper right hand corner, BIOSTAR has placed the 8-pin power connector in the normal position. The CPU Socket is located under the top heatsink. This board can take up to the latest 6-core Core i7-980X CPU. There is a heatsink covering the MOSFETs on the left side of the CPU Socket. There is plenty of room for after-market cooling. Two heatpipes lead out from the top MOSFET heatsink, one to the X58 chip the other continuing on to the ICH10R chip.
The board has six DIMM slots for up to 24GB of DDR3 memory. To install memory in Triple channel mode, you need to install memory in like-colored DIMM slots. Also note that the Core i7 CPU supports DDR3 memory up to 1066MHz speed. The motherboard supports memory at a higher rated speed via overclocking. The memory controller is on the CPU so this is a requirement. Due to chipset limitation the double channel memory requires a single DIMM per channel.
The bottom of the board starts off with a Texas instruments chip followed by the IDE controller. The 24-pin power connector is the next connector on the board. Next to the 24-pin power connector are the 6 SATA 2 ports. One nice thing about this board is that there is a separation of the SATA ports, allowing for easy installation of long video cards without hindering the drives. There is a JMB363 chip to control the IDE chip onboard.
The left side of the board starts off with color coded Front I/O connectors. This makes it extremely easy to install the FP I/O without trouble. The Power and Reset buttons are next with a Chassis Fan header following. Two USB 2.0 headers are next. Many motherboards are being released with at least some USB 3.0 ports, but that is not a priority for BIOSTAR at the moment on the X58 series, bringing lower cost products with an emphasis on overclocking.
The onboard audio on the board is provided by a Realtek ALC888S CODEC. This CODEC supports the latest High Definition Audio features. The onboard audio has taken over the discrete market from Creative Labs and Realtek’s ALC888S can handle such advanced features as multi-streaming (7.1+2 channel audio simultaneously), and the High Definition Content Protection found on Blu-ray discs and High Definition DVD formats. The Rear I/O on the board consists of a PS/2 Keyboard port, 2 external SATA ports, a Firewire port, 8 USB 2.0 ports, 2 RJ-45 ports for the onboard Gigabit Ethernet, 6 audio jacks for the onboard audio and a S/PDIF Out port.
