Asus - P6X58D-E Motherboard review
powerful next generation X58 motherboard
Review date: 14 April, 2010. Review by: IT Reviews Staff
The P6X58D-E borrows heavily from the flagship P6X58D Premium with a near-identical layout, the same triple-SLI and Crossfire feature set and importantly, the same voltage regulation circuitry. These juice-supplying components are essential for good overclocking results and with a premium 16+2 phase design we are expecting excellent results from this board.
The headline-grabbing features of the P6X58D-E are its next generation storage interfaces, however. SATA III support is provided by a Marvell controller while two USB 3.0 ports are supplied by a chip from NEC. Unlike Intel's other current platforms, the X58 has PCI Express lanes in abundance, so you get to enjoy these important new features at full speed.
Despite socket 1156's popularity, the decision to move the PCI Express controller onto the processor has resulted in a bandwidth-starved platform. This means motherboard manufacturers have had to resort to novel ways of offering USB 3.0 and 6Gb/s SATA, with some electing to steal bandwidth from the 16x video card lane while others combine multiple 1x lanes via an expensive bridging chip. As neither of these are optimal solutions, X58 remains the platform to get if you have deep pockets.
The layout of the P6X58D-E is generally superb with 90-degree angled SATA ports allowing unrestricted access to the expansion slots. There is plenty of room for unimpeded memory upgrades and enough space around the socket for even the largest 3rd party cooler. Our only slight worry is that some users may not have enough PCI slots for their existing peripheral cards. This is because one of the two provided is directly underneath the main video card slot; an asset you will lose with any high-end video card installed. Fortunately PCI Express cards are amply provided for by a single 1x slot and three 16x slots.
Users hoping for a quiet life will be pleased by the P6X58D-E's healthy smattering of RPM-controllable fan headers, all of which can be used by case fans as the P6X58D-E is entirely passively cooled. The large Northbridge heat sink is connected to the main voltage regulation heat sink via a heat spreader, but enthusiasts can unscrew the whole assembly for easy installation of water blocks should they wish to do so. Those planning to run this board as a test bed will be delighted to see an on-board power button along the bottom edge of the PCB.
The I/O panel of the P6X58D-E is a little spartan when compared to other recent boards. Six USB slots is a miserly allocation when we are used to seeing boards with 10, though you do get Firewire to ease your connectivity woes. It is strange to see eSATA missing from a board of this pedigree as well, though you can of course use a bracket to convert one of your internal ports if this is essential.
Audio enthusiasts are better catered for by six analogue jacks and both coaxial and optical outputs. PS/2 keyboards are also supported; an odd inclusion given that Asus has removed support for other legacy devices such as floppy and IDE. We were happy to see a recessed clear CMOS button as it saves the need to take the side panel off should you overclock too far.
In our benchmarking suite the P6X58D-E matches the performance of its P6T series predecessors as well as other high end X58 boards from Gigabyte and MSI. In a platform as mature as X58 we don't expect significant new gains in performance with new product launches, but it's nice to see the shoehorning of new features hasn't brought any penalties. The board is also extremely stable, working perfectly with 12GB of DDR3 fitted even at elevated memory speeds. During our testing of the platform we experienced not a single lock-up or error.
Within the BIOS you will find an accessible and intuitive layout. Voltages, bus speeds and memory timings are all housed within a single “AI Tweaker” menu and anyone who has used an Asus BIOS in the past few years will feel immediately at home. Although it's not quite as comprehensive as the Rampage series of boards, the P6X58D-E houses a dizzying array of voltage tweaking options.
Fortunately you don't need a master's degree in overclocking for spectacular results. By changing just the CPU, PLL, DRAM and QPI voltages we were able to take our Core i7 930 up to 4.4GHz using Danamic's excellent LMX heat sink. When shooting for the maximum base clock we dropped the chip's multiplier to 18 and maxed it out at 224MHz for a resulting clock speed of over 4GHz.
This is the kind of overclocking normally reserved for boards costing upwards of £200 so to see it on a model designed to sit in the middle of Asus' X58 range is impressive indeed. Equally impressive is the board's ability to seamlessly recover from an overclock too far, each time posting at fail-safe settings whilst handily retaining our previous settings for further refining.
When taken as a whole our experience with the P6X58D-E has been an extremely satisfying one. It provides peerless performance, overclockability and features at this price point and is exactly the product Asus needed to revitalise its X58 motherboard range. We'd have loved to see native eSATA and a few more USB ports on the I/O panel, but these niggles are a small price to pay for an otherwise fabulous motherboard.
Verdict
Asus reasserts itself in the modern X58 motherboard market with the spectacular P6X58D-E. Top tier overclocking and next generation features make this the socket 1366 board to get.
Company: Asus
Contact: 0870 1208340
