On the next few pages we'll show you some photos. The images were taken at high-resolution and then cropped and scaled down. The camera used was a Canon 450D 12 MegaPixel.

Right, let's startup the X58 photo-shoot. First off, this is the Kit that Intel submitted. 3x 1333 MHz DDR3 memory, two Core i7 Processors (920 & 965), we opted to use the (on display) stock cooler and not used though, you can see a X25 SSD drive.

First appearances always help making a good impression. Fact is, the minute you'll look at the board, you'll be a little stunned. That's is just a cool looking mainboard. Nice black PCB, Passive cooling. When you look a second time, you'll notice the weird placement of the memory, back panel connectivity .. we seem to miss a thing or two. Interesting. Let's go through the motherboard step by step.

Rear panel connectivity. As you can see, a serial and parallel (printer) connection are now officially a thing of the past, a serial killer indeed. But what I found rather disappointing, the PS2 mouse and keyboard connectors are missing. See, there's always a chance that your USB device isn't working properly, this way you can not fall back to an older style PS2 connection.

We get two eSATA ports, a luxurious eight back-panel USB 2.0 ports and a fire wire connector. Also a little weird, there's only one Gigabit Ethernet connection on this high-end motherboard which to date I'm a little confused about. What 250 USD does not have two ETH connectors in 2008 ? Very good to see are the audio connectors. 7.1 channels of analog sound can be connected, but the integration of an optical TOSLINK obviously has everybody's preference. So that's all looking good.

When we move over a little bit we can have a peek at Socket LGA 1366. Core i7 965 is already sitting on there anxiously awaiting to be tested. As you can see the voltage regulators around the CPU passively cooled. There's plenty of space for all kinds of coolers.