14 DAY TRIAL // EVGA has leaked pictures of yet another outrageous motherboard. Twitter shows a beast with two distinct LGA 1366 sockets and a myriad of performance features that will likely allow for new overclocking records to be set when it finally comes out. The board is unusual, not only through its high number of expansion and memory slots, but especially because of its distinct shape and size.
The company seems to have paid no attention to regular motherboard form factors and designed this board 1.5 inches longer than the standard ATX. This length is not much different from the XL-ATX form factor used by EVGA in its X58 Classified 4-way SLI board. The main issue lies in its width. The board seems to be about 14.5 inches wide, which is significantly more than the regular 10.3 inches of the E-ATX standard.
Nevertheless, putting aside the high difficulty of finding a case capable of housing the product, the board itself boasts quite an array of performance and expansion capabilities. The single chipset handles two distinct CPU sockets and the motherboard also features six memory slots and no less than seven PCI Express x16 slots.
This, besides being impressive, is also quite curious, as the board does not seem to have enough PCI Express lanes to support all seven x16 slots. This explains the three sets of digital switches and the apparent use of nForce 200 chips. The motherboard also seems to have three different BIOS chips, one in a removable socket.
Among other specifications, the board has an IDE connector, eight SATA ports (two of which are capable of 6Gbps) and two USB headers. The rear I/O panel was not clearly pictured but likely boasts PS/2 ports, six to eight USB 2.0 ports, eSATA and probably two USB 3.0 connectors. 7.1-channel audio and a connector for the EVGA EVBot overclocking tool can also be distinguished. Also, the board's Marvell chips also suggest the existence of two Gigabit Ethernet connectors.
It is still unknown what kind of processors the board will support, with Xeon being the most likely candidate even in case of Core i7 compatibility. Nevertheless, the main issue will be finding a power supply strong enough to power this motherboard along with four graphics cards and all other system components.
The pricing and availability of the board are unknown, but EVGA seems set to showcase it at CES.