The Board

The X58-USB3 is a clean board. This is primarily due to its simplistic design. As it is not loaded down with extras, the layout can be spacious and offer more room for components.

Of course, there are still some areas that are going to be a little cramped just by their nature. These are areas like the six RAM slots for the Triple Channel memory love you want. The CPU socket area is clean and very sparse. I mean it is very light on components; this could have a detrimental effect on overclocking if things are not setup right, though.

The cooling for all this is very beefy for the small number of power regulators on the board.

The peripheral slots are more than adequate. You have room for dual x16 SLI or Crossfire with an extra x4 slot thrown in for three-way Crossfire. You also get three x1 slots for good measure and a single PCI slot for those of you that still have those devices.

Flipping the board around, we get a look at the SATA ports. The X58-USB3 lacks something that people are expecting more often these days. There are no SATA 3.0 ports at all. You get six full SATA II ports (including GB's XHD) and that is it.

The I/O ports are not bad at all. You get six USB 2.0 ports, two USB 3.0 ports, two real PS/2 ports (one for mouse and one for keyboard), plus the usual audio ports. The X58-USB3 is a nice board; it is clean, well-built and has some well laid out tracing. Now we need to take a look and see if this design can perform or not.