ASUS P6X58 Premium motherboard arrives complete with USB 3.0 ports
By Donald Melanson 
posted Jul 20th 2009 6:03PM
posted Jul 20th 2009 6:03PM
We've seen cables, controllers, drivers and years of promises, and it looks like we now finally have some pictures of the first official USB 3.0 motherboard out in the wild. That milestone comes courtesy of ASUS, which looks to have gone all out (or as far out as motherboards can go) with its new P6X58 Premium model. As you can see above, it packs a pair of easily identifiable USB 3.0 ports and three standard USB 2.0 ports, along with accommodations for a Core i7 processor, six DDR3 memory slots, three PCI-Express 2.0 slots, and plenty of other standard fare. Still no word on a price or release date, unfortunately, and the folks at Xfastest unsurprisingly weren't able to provide any benchmarks or the like, considering that there isn't much in the way of actual USB 3.0 gear to test it with just yet.
[Via Everything USB]
[Via Everything USB]
finally!
Also it's useful for External Blu ray recorders/HD capture devices/HD Streaming devices/etc too many to list
It also has SATA 3 @ 6.0Gbps.
No, it hasn't. The controller has been called back due to manufacturing issues. There won't be any SATA 3 boards for quite a while, unfortunately.
Did you not click the read link? It does.
The stupidest thing was that the SATA/6.0 chip problem had to do with the legacy PATA/IDE mode. So the SATA/6 would work just fine.
In before USB 3.1 Revision
"three standard USB 2.0 ports"
Two
they didnt show the others maybe
If you click the read link, it looks like it has 4.
I see four USB 2.0 ports in the read link, not three.
i think i just drooled a little :)
Stroke?
In the land of computers we call that an Ethernet/Network/RJ45 port, but never a USB port...
The read link actually shows 4 USB 2.0 ports, and 2 USB 3.0 ports, and 2 network/ethernet/RJ45s :)
You forgot "large telephone jack" for when trying to explain computers and networking to computer illiterate.
http://pic.xfastest.com/MB/ASUS/P6X58-PREMIUM/P6X58-P-04.jpg
I call it the "net hole".
any cute USB 3.0 crapgadets out yet?
Yea, gotta get the people their USB 3.0 Humping Dog
perhaps they will hump 10x the speed of their 2.0 siblings
YES YES YES !!!!!!!!!!!
NOW I WILL BUILD MY NEW GAMING RIG
THANK YOU ASUS
even though I might wait for evga's answer
Recession Antidote!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Ah yes, ASUS and their "premium" boards. Stability nightmare.
Striker II Extreme, anyone?
Yeah, they are a disaster.
Actually, yeah. Blazing fast but a bit skiddish...
Can't wait for mp3 players to get usb 3 standardized
Now if only something supported 3.0 to try it with
I vote Zune HD for first 3.0 device. Are you listening MS?
I mean common, a device designed for large files with limited storage, xfer speed is gonna be your best friend.
I would like to see both Zunes and iPods having 3.0 capabilities in the near future. That would really penetrate the market for these things.
Subject: USB Ports
So this thing has twelvty-two USB 2.0 ports and 2 USB three ports?
Well... considering there are no 3.0 devices yet... it's a good assumption that you will have MORE USB 2.0 devices... right now.
But in a few years there will be 12 USB 3.0 ports on every motherboard.
Hell, I remember when I had a computer with only 2 USB ports... and they were 1.1...
^^^ I remember when we had punch cards. The transfer rate was about 4-8bytes a seconds depending on how fast your arms could move.
i love asus motherboards this might just be for my next build.
USB3 humping dog: now goes for it at 500 million times a second.
Please help me understand something... Why is it that they have
2 USB 2.0 ports + 2 USB 3.0 ports instead of
4 USB 3.0 ports?
Is USB 3.0 not compatible with USB 2.0?
I would guess a cost problem.
sadly, it doesn't look like it :'(
this is such B.S. it can't cost anymore to make 3.0 vs 2.0 ooooooh some plastic and metal.
The USB 3.0 spec is supposed to be backwards compatible to USB 1.1. Just speculating here: there may be some kind of issue where the speed (or communication) on the bus is affected by mixed spec'ed USB devices. That may be why ASUS configured this board this way. There's no way to be sure about this until USB 3.0 devices start showing up.
Why only two USB 3.0 ports you ask?
It's to prevent the connection between northbridge/processor to southbridge getting fucked.
Currently both Intel's Direct Media Interface and AMD's A-Link Express 2 are just too slow to handle the load >:-D
The USB 3.0 is probably a seperate chip added to it while the USB 2.0 is built into the southbridge. That's how some of the first mobos with USB 2.0 were when it came out.
Also, the USB 3.0 ports are different from USB 2.0.
Like its predecessor, USB 3.0 will offer backward compatibility.
USB 3.0 cables are now 9-wired, instead of the previous 4, and have modified connectors.
Dimensions remain the same. USB 3.0 functionalities are provided when the added signal lines become connected.
See diagrams of the connectors http://www.necel.com/usb/en/about_usb/USB3_3.html
The USB 2.0 ports are provided by the system chipset, which can run 10 or 12 of them. They're "free,"or as near as something on a mobo can be.
The USB 3.0 ports will require their own chip. I don't know the specs of that chip but it may be that it can only control two ports. Plus the chip costs money, and adds complexity to the board because it has to be connected internally to the PCI Express bus.
cheapskate asus! they should have made all the ports usb3.0 as they are backwards compatible!
I presume the reason there are separate ones is because X58 does USB 2.0 and the NEC chip does USB 3.0. Seems odd if the NEC chip only supports 2 ports though. Not sure if any of those USB headers are USB 3.0 though?
I'm not sure why there are any 2.0 ports - as far as I know 3.0 are backwards compatible so I'll just wait for Gigabyte to make a system with 6 or more 3.0 ports.
yep, a board with 8 usb3 ports and 2 usb3 headers and 6 sata3 ports will do me nicely, i won't settle for anything less.
You have connected a usb 2.0 device to a 3.0 port if you would like this device to perform faster windows can search............
Crap were gonna have to get use to that message again aren't we? Damn it, I thought we had finally gotten rid of it too.
I thought it was the other way around...
For a few months: Hey, my bleeding edge motherboard has USB3.0!
For ever after: You only have 2 USB3.0 ports?
Nice board but I am going to wait for Gigabyte's version.
Well, this should mean Apple should adopt this in....what...2020?
;)
Apple was one of the first computer manufacturers to have USB... way back in 1998.
We'll have to see how they adopt future connections. They will probably jump on the Firewire 3200 standard as well as USB 3.0.
Hmm, but uhm, any motherboards with hat wireless US stuff?
all hats are wireless in the US ;)
USB*
You'd be surprised of the amount of wires involved in hats.
No mention of the VDR used, I read somewhere intel is about to release VDR12.0 specification and that's required for their next gen CPU's, whereas even the very latest 'only' do VDR11.1
Something to worry about now that you heard about it, where before you never heard the term even :)
Make that VRD, I keep switching those letters dammit.
Yeah, that's cool and all, but how long will we have to wait until we can actually use the ports? When will the big three-0 become mainstream? Will two-point-oh die off immediately?
I really hope this doesn't have serial or ps/2 ports. I think that look terrible and I haven't used either in years.
Sadly they don't even supply a header on the mobo for serial any more often, even if they use monitoring chips that have full functionality for it and only need a few pins to connect to.
Seems a waste to not even be willing to supply a small header on the board itself, it would cost them 10 cents.
http://pic.xfastest.com/MB/ASUS/P6X58-PREMIUM/P6X58-P-04.jpg
They even use 2 PS/2, which is odd since several manufacturers went with just one now.
Yes, they went all out on this board. Except they forgot to add eSata ports.
FAIL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
woohhhh holy ********************** i came
Vulgarity aside, I'm not sure if you're using the correct past-tense.
Ya it was my roomates.....they're crazy....they tied me up. They were having their way with me and right when i was about to call the police....i came....and that was nice.
sweet. now can't wait till I upgrade my tower next :3
Now someone needs to make some USB 3.0 devices D:
You guys do know that you don't have to upgrade you whole system, there will undoubtedly be USB 3 PCI cards...
You guys know that you dont have to upgrade your whole system, there will undoubtedly be USB 3 PCI cards...
PCI? haha, you mean PCIe, PCI could not even try to do USB3.0
Micro-USB 3.0 connector is hideous.
Epic fail? USB 3.0 is definitely a welcome upgrade I suppose but I'm assuming this board will be 300-400 dollars at least. The fact that they don't even have esata support is pathetic. Unlike USB 3.0, esata is here already with hundreds of supported devices.
Aren't all socket 1366 mobo's $300? It's because they need many layers PCB's I hear to trace all the triple channel RAM interface lines, that's why intel now thought up the new old system of dual channel and fewer pins 'budget' line with the socket 1156 and the P55 chipset.
3 express slot/i7/USB 3.0 and SATA 6gb
I just came.
No AMD love?
You were one of the better ones asus :(
It says the NEC USB3.0 chip costs $15 when bought in bulk, so I'm sure they can put it on the next AMD board too without too much trouble, if they make 'premium' AMD boards that is.
Jeeze. If they were messing with the connector why not finally fix the orientation issue? How much time have we all wasted with flash drives and other USB products getting the connector in backwards. It'd sure be nice if the connector had mirror contacts and worked either way.
that is sexy.
i feel outdated. i just bought a macbook. HAHA
No eSATA? :(
So the USB 3.0 slot looks crappier and flimsey as heck on that mobo... Always nice when they do that.. Like with the DVI and HDMI ports.. Can almost break them off with your thumb...
Yea I don't think they really thought the ports would be used much. That would be my only guess :/ that is lame though.
The next 6 months will be a great time to build a new PC.
Just curious as to what genius decided to make the USB connector symmetrical instead of shape keyed in some way? Why?
Why even have USB 2.0. USB 3.0 is suppose to be backwards compatible. Don't tell me some one doesn't trust the technology ;P
ASUS is still the manufacturer to beat as far as motherboards go... :)
Just think of the sampling rate of those lazer mice with USB 3.0! :)