MSI X58 Pro Motherboard
Introduction
Published: 25th March 2009 | Source: MSI | Price: £158.69 |
Making the leap to Intel latest chipset meant that you either had the GDP of a small country or were involved in some very suspect criminal activity. How else could you afford a new Motherboard, new RAM, new CPU, all at 'new tech' prices not to mention the inflated costs because of the economic downturn? The MSI X58 Pro has now made entry into the latest and greatest socket set that little bit less painful thanks to undercutting most of it's competition by over £40. With DDR3 prices tumbling and CPU prices surely to follow suit, you no longer have to wear a pinstripe suit and carry around your 'tommy gun' in a Violin case.
So where's the catch? Truth is this motherboard does not have the ludicrous amount of features the high end boards have, nor does it (officially) support SLI, only cCossfire (more on this later). It does however, have everything you need to get you going, 6 RAM slots, 6 SATA ports, 3 PCIe slots etc that you would find on most X58 boards. It is, from the outset at least , a no frills budget board. All to often now we are seeing the word 'pro' which is misleading as pro should mean feature packed, high end but in reality it is now associated with basic/budget rather than the term 'professional'. For the top of the line boards, it seems a derivative of a precious metal or Solar event is more appropriate.
Here's what MSI have to say about their latest addition to their X58 range of motherboards:
MSI, the world's leading mainboard manufacturer, today announced its most affordable one of X58 mainboard, X58 Pro. It offers an innovatively new architecture that adopts the latest Intel® X58 Express chipset that supports the latest Intel® Core i7 processor, along with ultra-high bandwidth QPI (Quick Path Interconnect) transmission system and high-speed 3-channel DDR3 memory, resulting performance so extreme that has ever seen in mainboards. X58 Pro also has utilised the Gen.2 DrMOS, which introduced exclusively by MSI since the P45 series, improving its power efficiency more than 93% to bring best performance.
Specification
The following specification was taken directly from MSI's website:
| Socket | Intel 1366 |
| CPU Support | Intel i7 |
| FSB/Hypertransport Bus | 6.5GT/s |
| Chipset | Intel X58+ICH10R |
| Memory | DDR3 800/1066/1333/1600* (OC) |
| Channels | Triple |
| DIMM slots | 6 |
| Maximum Supported Memory | 24GB |
| PCIe x16 | x 3 |
| PCIe Gen 2.0 | 2x 16, 1x 4 |
| PCIe x1 | x2 |
| PCI | x2 |
| SATA | x7 |
| RAID | 0/1/5/10 |
| LAN | 10/100/1000 |
| USB | 6(Rear) Expandable to 12 |
| Audio Ports | 6x3.5mm analogue + SPDIF |
| FireWire | x1 |
| eSATA | x1 |
| Form Factor | ATX |
| Multi GPU Support | Crossfire (yes), SLI (no) |
Most Recent Comments
.Quite a few sub £200 boards now, 6 iirc. Nice reviewQuote
I don`t think the esthetics of the mobo should be equally graded as performance. If u have a mobo that works 100% faster than the one that looks "kewl", u'd be a tad foolish to pick the slower one cos the memory slots glow in the dark.
I was gonna slate all the other cards on the list, cos quite frankly I feel this mobo embarasses the lot of them in terms of pricing.
They all peak and trough in various areas, but they don't all cost £50-60 more than this.
No SLI ? Think I could live with that.
Good stuff.Quote
I was gonna slate all the other cards on the list, cos quite frankly I feel this mobo embarasses the lot of them in terms of pricing.
They all peak and trough in various areas, but they don't all cost £50-60 more than this.
No SLI ? Think I could live with that.
Good stuff.Quote
I think some people go on looks more than you would think Rast 
Great little board at a price point that motherboard manufacturers should be working downwards in price from. The market is going to die unless others follow MSI's price trend.Quote
Great little board at a price point that motherboard manufacturers should be working downwards in price from. The market is going to die unless others follow MSI's price trend.Quote
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The opposite of this would probably be a bloodrage in terms of aesthetics and price.