X58A-OC Review - Physical Review

A bit marketing-ish but what the heck; nice read for a thursday-morning. Checking multiple reviews will of course give you a better impression of this (soon-to-be-retail?) OC board. Oh, and for the overly critical readers, I've highlighted the part of the introduction that talks about the "world's first". Complaints go, as always, in the forums!

Today I have my first close encounter with this masterpiece of a motherboard. Like no other motherboard its sole purpose is to fulfill the needs of overclockers, and overclockers only. Yes it is true, every motherboard is overclockable, yet not all motherboards are overclocking friendly. This isn’t the first motherboard to be tuned to overclock, and it’s not the first to hold world records, but it is the first motherboard to be targeted solely at overclockers, and extreme overclockers at that. Not everyone may agree with that statement, but it is true. While many motherboards feature overclocking as their main feature, they still are marketed towards gamers as well. As we saw earlier the G1 series is targeted towards gamers, and hardcore gamers at that, this board is on the exact opposite side of the spectrum in terms of features. While the G1 Assassin might have a creative 20K2 audio processor and a Bigfoot NIC, the X58A-OC has a revamped voltage regulator module and direct hardware controlled multiplier, BLCK, and even switching frequency adjustments. This board is similar to a few other boards in terms of its features, but this board is without any features that overclockers do not need. With this board you don’t pay a premium for ICs(chips) you will never use (extra USB, dual NIC, eSATA, IEEE, or even 6 channel audio), instead GIGABYTE took the money that was saved and invested it in custom order parts for the voltage regulator module, and some nifty overclocking features.