ASUS P6X58 Premium motherboard arrives complete with USB 3.0 ports
By Donald Melanson 
posted July 20th 2009 6:03PM
posted July 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.