ATX
Intel X58 Express
Intel LGA1366
Three x16; two x1
Two
Six (triple-channel)
24GB
No
Somebody apparently forgot to tell MSI that a single motherboard can’t be everything to everyone, because the new X58 Eclipse not only tries, it succeeds in almost every category. The X58 Eclipse has you covered, whether your priority is overclocking, gaming prowess, audio quality, storage capabilities, ease of installation, or power efficiency. Only those looking for a bargain-basement price are likely to be disappointed by this premium board.
The X58 Eclipse is an ATX motherboard designed for Intel’s new Core i7 processors. It sports the new LGA1366 socket and the X58 Express chipset. The black board has black-and-blue slots and a subdued heat-pipe design that looks much slicker than MSI’s overly colorful and elaborate earlier efforts. There are six DDR3 RAM sockets, allowing you to add two sets of DIMMs in the triple-channel mode that offers the most memory bandwidth with the Core i7 series.
The board’s layout and features make the installation and troubleshooting procedures as painless as we’ve yet experienced. Much thought was given to port and slot placement. The six primary SATA ports, for instance, face the side of the board, so that no ports will be blocked by large graphics cards. There are easily accessible power and reset switches right on the board, allowing you to run initial tests outside of your case, and you can connect the case wires to MSI’s M-Connector and plug them in all at once. All the niggling details are taken care of; for example, the board accommodates both three-pin and two-pin case power LEDs.
If you run into any trouble booting your system, the D-LED2 can help you narrow down the issue. During the power-on sequence, its superbright Organic Light-Emitting Diode (OLED) display shows you as each component (CPU, memory, and so on) is initialized, letting you see exactly when things are going awry. Once your system is booted, you can press a button on the motherboard to set the D-LED2 to display temperatures and voltages.
The X58 Eclipse supports both Nvidia’s SLI and AMD’s CrossFireX for adding multiple graphics cards. There are three PCI Express (PCIe) x16 slots, but only two operate at full x16 capacity; the third is electrically an x4 slot. (If you plan to use three graphics cards with an X58-chipset motherboard, you’ll need to find a board that includes Nvidia’s nForce 200 SLI processor to get full x16 channel support on all three slots.) Connector cables are included for both SLI and CrossFireX. You’ll also find two PCIe x1 slots and a pair of PCI slots.
Rather than mounting the typical unexceptional audio chipset on the motherboard, MSI bundles a Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme audio card with the board. Moving the audio off the motherboard sacrifices one of the two available PCIe x1 slots, but it eliminates interference from the motherboard, allows for higher-end audio features, and frees up more room on the back panel for other ports. This eight-channel card is a version of Creative’s $60 X-Fi, not the $150 edition, but it still includes the full suite of features, including EAX Advanced HD surround, CMSS-3D faux surround, and the 24-bit Crystalizer for enhancing MP3 clarity.
The X58 Eclipse is loaded with ports. There are eight USB ports on the back panel, plus connectors for four more; two FireWire ports; two Gigabit Ethernet connectors; two external SATA (eSATA) ports; and separate PS/2 mouse and keyboard connectors. You can also add an amazing amount of storage: There are 10 SATA portson the board (plus the aforementioned eSATA ports), and there’s an IDE port as well. The only thing missing is a floppy connector; if you still need to access floppies, you’ll need to use a USB floppy drive. MSI’s BIOS includes a ton of overclocking features, giving you extremely detailed control over both manual and automatic overclocking settings, including the ability to set the Core i7-965 Extreme Edition’s multiplier limit depending on how many individual cores are in use.
The board also comes with BIOS-level support for its GreenPower Genie module, which plugs in between the power supply and motherboard and offers real-time voltage adjustments based on system load. Windows utilities for real-time adjustment of overclocking and power saving are also included.
MSI's documentation is among the most extensive we’ve yet seen with a motherboard. In addition to multiple short “quick guides” for various aspects of the board and a separate manual covering the sound card, there’s a thick manual that includes much more thorough explanations of what the various BIOS settings do than we’re used to seeing.
Overall, MSI’s X58 Eclipse is a superb foundation on which to build a high-end Core i7 system. Fully loaded, you can use it to create a supersystem, with 12 SATA drives, 12 USB devices, a pair of dual-GPU AMD or Nvidia graphics cards, 24GB of memory, and Intel’s fastest consumer processors. Given all that, we can live without a floppy connector.
Price (at time of review): $349
author : Denny Atkin
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