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The Sapphire Pure Black X58 arrives in a fantastic looking box which exudes a serious, yet high tech appearance.
Inside, the upper layer holds the cabling, accessories, backplate and manual.
The manual is well written, if a little brief. Additionally there is a software disc, branded sapphire IDE cable and a plethora of SATA cables. Not the most exhaustive bundle we have seen, but as this is a pre production board there are possibilities that this may be enhanced.
The board itself is an attractive black and blue colour scheme, complete with sticker offering ram installation guidance.
The overall design of the board is first class with substantial, heavy duty heatsinks offering enhanced PCB cooling. Sapphire are using high quality Japanese polymer solid capacitors with super low ESR and high heat resistance. Always good to hear as we are going to thrash it within an inch of its life later.
Sapphire highlight their use of new ‘Sapphire Diamond Chokes' (patent pending) which greately improves the board power regulation. This has an integral heatsink and runs cooler than a standard choke used on many other motherboards.
Sapphire are using gold plated contacts across the whole board design. The CPU socket even contains gold plated connectors up to 15u and the Sata,Gigabit Ethernet and USB 3.0 connectors get high grade 30u gold contacts.
The board supports up to 24GB of memory via the 6 triple channel slots. The blue slots should be populated first in a tri configuration, then the black.
The Pure Black X58 has four PCI-E 2.0 slots which are all x16, unless used in multiple card CFx configurations. PCI-E2 and PCI-E3 will be x8 link and PCI-E4 x4 link (Gray slot in image above). The single PCI slot supports a variety of expansion cards such as a LAN, USB or SCSI card, although it will block the second PCI-E slot if you wish to use more than one (dual width) graphics card.
There are a total of six SATA ports included on the Pure Black X58 board. The black coloured connectors are controlled by the South Bridge Chipset and operate at a speed up to 3GB/s. The red ports are 6Gb/s capable and are controlled by the Marvel 9128 chipset. An IDE port sits to the right of these connectors.
Across the bottom of the board is a diagnostic LED to report any issues for verification. There is a reset CMOS button here next to reset and power buttons. The use of a CMOS button is a great option as there is no fiddling for jumper positions. Sapphire have also incorporated a dual bios switch which not only offers peace of mind, but means you can boot from two entirely different configurations without even having to enter the bios. There are several fan headers in this area and an additional sata and USB 3.0 header for external devices. There is also an IEEE1394a Firewire port in the vicinity.
Connectivity at the rear of the board is exceptionally strong. There is support for older technology with a PS/2 keyboard and mouse port, above two USB 2.0 ports. There are six more USB 2.0 ports on the back as well as two USB 3.0 ports, which are coloured blue. eSATA is also offered, as well as BlueTooth 2.1, Optical S/PDIF-out, coaxial S/PDIF out and another IEEE1294a Firewire port. There are audio ports on the right and a 10/100/1000 LAN port. This is an extremely capable board if you demand the highest levels of connectivity.
What a fantasic product, any ideas of a price?
I wonder who the maker is. Foxconn? Still, hell of a release from Sapphire, certainly put them on the map in 2011, but I wonder if it will sell well due to the new socket which gives mega performance for a fraction of the price
Nice board design not much to fault, apart from the medicore bundle. When is it released? I could never get the sapphire power supplies here, so ill be curious to see availabity.
Class name too, instead of DU-23723 V12 like you see with many makers, we need catchy, memorable names. Sapphire always do this, ‘toxic. etc.
This kind of setup is way out of my price range, ill be aiming for 2500k in a few months.
really nice review, mega testing. gotta love the noctua NH D14!
any chance I could get that system mailed over to me? ill cover postage.
Good board layout and cant see much wrong with it. Id like a CMOS button on the back of the board though for easy pressing if needed.
Hey zardon, I know you love the noctua NH D14, but how far would this CPU go on the mobo with something a little less expensive? im curious
I wonder how often they will update the bioses on these boards. I doubt they make them, so im guessing the bios update situation might be a ‘second’ priority for the motherboard originator
Where did this come from? I never read any announcements about it. Hell of a good OC on air there guys. will be curious to see the pricing.
way 2 go sapphire, but why not an AMD board !
‘why no amd board?’
They probably know that an intel board like this will sell much better than an AMD product. its a high end enthusiast product and unfortunately AMD cant compete. probably why dirk meyer is collecting an early pension. I hope it changes.
oh yeah, great review Z.
Well I am rather impressed with this product. Have you any ideas on the availability date yet >?
Most excellent. great overclocking results. I cant get my 980 past 4.1ghz on my asus board.
Noctua NH D14 FTW. great review!
I’ve had enough of apple and all their difficulties. It’s one scandal right after another with their products. No more will I fall into apples marketing propaganda which is all hype. Don’t believe the paid bloggers on here who defend or deny the many countless problems of apple products.