14 DAY TRIAL // ASUS has already caused a particularly strong set of waves on the motherboard market by means of the Republic of Gamers (ROG) Rampage III Formula mainboard, which tries to merge the ideals of performance and value, among other things. Now, the same outfit is trying to do something quite similar, only this time with a product that has already made an appearance. It was first previewed about two months ago, at Computex, Taipei, in June, 2010, and goes by the name of the TUF Series Sabertooth X58 motherboard.
The Sabertooth X58 is, obviously, powered by the LGA 1366 socket, which means it is more than ready to house Intel's top-most-grade central processing units. Needless to say, this will stir the overclocking desire in any enthusiast. Knowing this, the company was sure to implement components and technologies capable of not only allowing such operations, but also increase the stability and endurance of the motherboard itself.
The board has high-quality chokes, solid state capacitors and MOSFETs and a CeraM!X Heatsink Coating on the more critical surfaces and components to enhance heat resistance and dissipation. As for actual specification, six DDR3 memory slots are present, as well as six SATA 3.0 Gbps connectors, a pair of SATA 6.0 Gbps ports and three PCI Express x16 slots that are more than apt for multi-GPU SLI or CrossFireX setups. Finally, the Sabertooth features an 8+2 phase power design, Gigabit Ethernet, two eSATA ports, 7.1 channel audio and FireWire.
All in all, the product should play its part as a high-quality overclocking platform while still remaining, price-wise, at least remotely classifiable as affordable, though being a high-end product won't exactly allow it to ship for nothing. Unfortunately, exact availability or pricing details have not been disclosed. Still, knowing that it has been months since its first preview, it can be assumed that its arrival to market is not too far off.