ASUS' USB 3.0-equipped P6X58D Premium motherboard now available
By Donald Melanson 
posted November 25th 2009 7:39PM
posted November 25th 2009 7:39PM
Eager to get in all the USB 3.0 hard drives, SSD drives and... other hard drives cropping up these days? Then you're in luck, as ASUS' brand new, USB 3.0-ready P6X58D Premium motherboard is now finally available to order. Of course, being an early adopter doesn't come cheap, and this particular motherboard will run you a hefty $309.99 from Newegg. That will get you a board that runs with the best of 'em, however, including support for a Core i7 processor, room for up to 24GB of RAM, three PCI-Express 2.0 slots, a pair of 6Gb/s SATA interfaces, four plain old USB 2.0 ports and, most importantly, two for USB 3.0. Setting up a rig? Feel free to let us know how it works out in comments.
[Thanks, James]
[Thanks, James]
Actually, $300 isn't that bad for a good motherboard.
I agree, but i would have liked more than two 3.0 ports
$300 is pretty expensive for a motherboard. That's ultra-high-end motherboard price range.
@einhanderkiller
It's highend. Ultra-highend can go into the 500s. A solid motherboard (250-300$) is worth it though. So many problems can be solved by having a quality motherboard.
@swimatm
you can buy the asus supercomputer mobo for 450$. that has 7 pci-e slots for only 150$ more than this. Which isnt that bad either.. but still realitively expensive compared to past "high end mobos for the desktop. Doesn't mean its over-priced..it just means the desktop or gaming systems are now packin server like hardware specs...the "high" end just got "higher" ...hopefully mid range gets faster and cheaper.
@einhanderkiller but it IS a high end motherboard.. its USB 3.0, which isn't commonplace yet, so what makes you think this is meant to be a consumer friendly budget mobo?
The point being made was that as far as high spec'd i7 boards go, this isn't by any stretch of the imagination a really expensive one.
But, will it Hackintosh? (@2008 Blendtec, Inc.)
Why not make them all 3.0? This happened with the move to 2.0 next thing you know you have more than 2 3.0 devices then your scrambling around looking for some ugly 3.0 hub. Its a little pricey... I mean they added 2 3.0 ports and the price goes up 50%? meh.
@UnsilentMajority … It's quite easy to explain. These motherboards which enable USB 3.0 via their own chipset solutions must rely on breaking up a PCIe x4 slot, which has a maximum throughput of 1000MB/s into two USB 3.0 slots, each having a maximum of -- you guessed it -- 500MB/s, which is shy of the 600MB/s that USB 3.0 is capable of.
The Intel chipset can only support a limited amount of PCIe lanes, so if you're going to have an SLI/CF board with two or three x16 slots you're not going to have much more bandwidth available for USB 3.0.
@jonwd7 you rarely get comments where you actually learn something on here. Good show man, good show.
Also the chipset has USB2 baked in it, so to not use that would be daft, especially since most devices you have are USB2 anyway.
Blame intel, or patiently wait for 2011.
USB 3.0? meh.
What I want is the Apple/Intel LightPeak super high-bandwidth interface.
@HighestRanked Is it just me or are your comments always negative?
@designfabulous I'm not pro or con USB 3.0 but I am more interested in hearing about LightPeak.
@HighestRanked
I'm not pro or con LightPeak, I am just more interested in hearing what this article is about.
@zsmorr that sounds good to me.
All those new technologies, USB 3.0, SATA 6Gb/s interface, 24GB of RAM and still having ps/2 keyboard and mouse ports... Seriously...?
lol, some of us are cheap when it comes to mice and keyboards. I'm surprised there wasn't a parallel port to go with the PS/2 ports
@alexman98 PS2 mouse maybe not, but for some reason USB is limited to holding down 6 keys at a time (n-key holdover). I understand PS2 doesn't have that problem. Makes a difference in some extreme situations for gamers.
Shockingly I think this one doesn't have a floppy drive connector :o
I would have preferred a COM port over 2 time ps/2 though, if I was in the market, and it's odd they don't use that single ps/2 dual use (mice/keyboards) trick.
@alexman98
as long as mouses and keyboards sell with those connections still, they will make motherboards that accept it but at least laptops eliminated those useless ports
@alexman98 people still use those, you know.
@kjsin1994 ok but aside from your grandma noone does
@fuckoff I use a PS/2 Keyboard, and a lot of highend keyboards still use PS/2
steelseries 7G for instance:
http://www.steelseries.com/us/products/keyboards/7g/information
personally, I'm using an IBM Model M manufactured in 1989, it is sexy for gaming and general use.
There are lots of keyboards with PS/2 sold (they are the cheapest), but a mouse one isn't needed anymore.
Oh, except for those older MS mice who constantly disconnect from USB for no reason and work best with the ps/2 adapter.
@TJourney I'm with you buddy. If my PC had those ports I wouldn't have had to buy a pricey adapter for my IBM Model M (M13) - and it has both PS/2 mouse and keyboard connectors!
@YpoCaramel
That doesn't seem possible it's more likely PS/2 is limited to 6 keys at a time as it's strictly for simple instructions, USB is a straight data connection, if it can handle hard drives then it should be able to handle all the keys at a time.
Any word on i9 support?
@WhatHappened
Theoretically it will work with i9, but it might need a Bios update first.
@(Unverified) I wouldn't count on that. Intel has been known to change pin layouts/count for different levels of the same serious (ex. Core i5-Core i7).
@Branhower series*
@WhatHappened
If you mean the 6-core i7, it works.
Only 2 SATA ports?
@Cam it has 6 SATA 300 ports and 2 SATA 600 ports
@Cam
The others are on the end behind the PCI Slots
@kris120890 Oh, thank you.
are there any hdd that can utilize the 6Gbit?
@va jj
2 eSATA ports. on the back.
@dieselstation oops.. was supposed to be for @Cam
@va jj One of the new Seagates support 6GB/s, but it doesn't actually take advantage of the bandwidth much. I think if it comes in useful soon then it'll be related to SSD applications.
@va jj
HDDs are barely reaching the 1.5 Gbps speed. It will be SSDs that start breaking the 3.0 Gbps speeds and and start approaching the 6.0 Gbps speed.
Any X58 chipset board (i.e. any LGA1366 socket board) is theoretically able to support Core i9, assuming a BIOS update is released for it. I think it's safe to assume that ASUS will provide such an update, particularly for this board.
I don't see the point in adding only 2 USB 3.0 ports when they're backwards compatible with 2.0
@FAP FAP FAP
Read jonwd7's reply to UnsilentMajority's post and you'll understand.
Great but any more choices on LGA1366 i7 CPUs?
@pppun Gigabyte is supposed have an X58 mobo out soon. Not sure how "soon" is defined, though.
My LightPeakz iz eating all your dataz!
question is when will they release usb 3.0 as a pci card then it will become more wide spread
http://www.sharkoon.com/html/produkte/zubehoer/usb30_host_controller_card/index_en.html?id=13
sharkoon has one, nec has onem, asus has one, any second the market will be flooded with the cards.