14 DAY TRIAL // It was only yesterday that the Santa Clara, California-based chip maker, NVIDIA officially announced that several motherboard manufacturers, including ASUS, Gigabyte, EVGA, MSI and DFI, would be introducing their nForce 200 SLI-enabled X58-based platforms, when Intel decided to officially announce its next-generation desktop platform. It now appears that we already have the very first leaked picture of EVGA's upcoming product, which has been confirmed by NVIDIA yesterday.
Computer enthusiasts and gaming users will rejoice at the fact that EVGA will be offering its own X58-based desktop platform, mainly because the company is known for coming out with high-quality support for its products. With the launch of Intel's new desktop platform, EVGA was unlikely to miss out on the performance levels promised by this next-generation chipset.
Now, the leaked picture details a yet unfinished version of the upcoming motherboard, but even so, it can give us a pretty general understanding of what to expect from said product. First of all, EVGA has chosen a rather interesting cooling solution for the board's Northbridge, Southbridge and MOSFET, with the Northbridge being featured with an active cooling solution. As far as the layout is concerned, it has been featured with 6 triple-channel ready DDR3 memory DIMMs, three PCI Express X16 slots that will most likely support an NVIDIA SLI multi-graphics configuration, one PCI Express X1 and two regular PCI slots.
The backpanel of the board features a keyboard PS2 port, 8 USB 2.0 ports, an optical and coaxial SPDIF, e-SATA, FireWire, 8 Channel Audio and a clear CMOS button. There are also two Gitabit Ethernet ports. Given that the board is still in its development stages and that Intel is still 3 weeks or more away from introducing the new X58 platform, it is interesting to see which manufacturer will come out with the most stable and strong built platform.