First Look: Gigabyte X58

At first glance, the GA-EX58-EXTREME appears to share many of the same ingredients Gigabyte used in their GA-EP45T-EXTREME P45-Express motherboard, with a dash of spice from their GA-X48T-DQ6 X48 mainboard. Not surprisingly, motherboards in general have followed the same trends for several years now. In fact, you might be hard-pressed to decide the difference if you viewed the bunch from a small distance.

Design traditions not withstanding the EX58-EXTREME offers all of the features you would expect from an X58-Express enthusiast motherboard, such as Intel Core-i7 support and tri-channel DDR3, but also CrossFireX and SLI graphics-teaming support.

From the top view, the Gigabyte GA-EX58-EXTREME reveals a blue-themed layout. Unlike past Gigabyte motherboards (such as the GA-X48T-DQ6 I previously mentioned), there are far less colors in this X58 iteration. The biggest difference is how the colors used on the EX58-EXTREME actually represent something, instead of creating a loosely associated collage.

Gigabyte is working to promote their Ultra Durable 3 feature, which introduces the industry's first consumer desktop motherboard design with 2 ounces of copper used on the Power and Ground layers of the printed circuit board (PCB) to lower system temperature and improve energy efficiency. The flat 2-D appearance of the Intel ICH10R Southbridge hides any visible heat-pipes used to cool the chipset, which appears bulky a little out of place before leading into the X58 Northbridge and the heart and core of the Hybrid Silent-Pipe 2 feature.

The new LGA1366 socket increases the distance between CPU cooler mounting holes to 80mm, which is significantly more footprint area than the 72mm used by the LGA775 socket. Some CPU cooler manufacturers have designed adapters for their LGA775 coolers to fit on the new LGA1366 socket, which isn't a very safe practice. For systems not receiving an overclock, this may not be such a problem, but if you're going to re-use your Core 2 cooler on a Core i7 processor, it had better be listed near the top of our Best CPU Cooler Performance list. I'll explain why in my final thoughts section, which should be helpful information for enthusiasts.

The backside of the PCB lacks the "Crazy Cool" heatspreader plates we've seen in past generations of Gigabyte motherboards, which some enthusiasts may not miss so much. The socket LGA 1366 interface receives a backplate for reinforcing the structural rigidity of the GA-EX58-EXTREME and improves contact pressure for the CPU cooler.

After a short 'first glance' at the basic layout for the GA-EX58-EXTREME motherboard, it appears that Gigabyte has designed this to be a non-nonsense mainboard solution for overclockers and enthusiasts. We will dig deeper in the following sections to find out if this Core-i7 X58-Express DDR3 motherboard offers the features overclockers and hardware tweakers will want out of and "EXTREME" labeled product.

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