6 - Photos - Intel Extreme Motherboard DX58SO (2)

Now here's the weirdest thing ever. Again this is the top of the line Intel X58 mainboard. X58 has triple channel memory. Thus for optimal usage you need to pair 3 or 6 DIMMs. Intel decided to go for 4 DIMM slots. Effectively wasting once slot which you'll never use. I'm flabbergasted as to why this mainboard does not have six DIMM slots, really.

Here we stare at the Northbridge chip, the X58, nicely passively cooled. Though is does get warm. So make sure you have some ventilation inside your chassis. Closeby we spot the 8-pin power connectors located in the most inconvenient place you can imagine. Typically your PSU is located above your mainboard. 8-pin 12V CPU connecters are typically not that long. So the location of that 8-pin header, might be an issue for some power supplies. Besides you have wire running over your mainboard, which aesthetically looks shit.

Now see the small blue heatink on the left ? That's the location of the ICH10R Southbridge ship. Located at the bottom we see 6 SATA ports equally divided over the lower end of the motherboard with the outer two slots located at THE most inconvenient place you can think of. Another design flaw that somehow Intel did not take into consideration.

Why you ask ? Well, this mainboard series is intended for high-end gear, including high-end graphics cards. And cards like GeForce GTX 260/280 or Radeon 4870/X2 are stretch out to the end of the ATX specification. In other words, they are long.

The SATA ports when used, are literally preventing such graphics cards to be installed. Have a look at the next photo.