First looks - XFX's 'budget' X58 motherboard early look: promises much

[HEXUS]

Turn your Core i7 920 to a 965 for 'free'.

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[aidanjt]

£210 is still a high premium for just a motherboard.

[drunkenmaster]

lol, budget, I was expecting a £150 board and to find I was wrong to tell people the prices would never come that low. Thicker pcb, more tracers, more mem slots/traces means these boards will always cost more to make aswell as to design.

One thing worth noting about the "poor" placement of the 8pin power socket. There are sooo many heatsinks that can really only be installed outside of a case, and they are generally all so big now that access to the top left corner of the pcb is almost non existant once you've installed sink then got the motherboard into the case. In those situations the top edge placement of the 8pin socket actually becomes the far worse position. Also remember that more, and more, and more cases have the psu at the base of the case now, making the top edge position difficult for length/routing reasons and still often no room to get your hand down into the corner.

There isn't really a perfect place for the cable but mostly the lower placement will be basically always reachable in any case once mobo/cpu heatsink are installed, while many heatsink case combo's make the top placement a complete pain in the arse.

I'd prefer the cable to be ever so slightly harder to route but you can reach the clip to attach/detach the cable as needed, than cable to be easy but you can't reach the damn thing at all.

[directhex]

Can get them for £200................. of course, sometimes they end up DOA. *cough*

[directhex]

http://www.dabs.com/productview.aspx?quicklinx=5DDV - £193 from Dabs

[moogle]

Eww it's XFX again...

The board is nice looking but that 8 pin really should be at the top so the cable can be hidden more easily

Wonder if it's a good clocker..

[aidanjt]

Wonder if it's a good clocker..

Eww it's XFX again...

You answered yourself before you asked the question.

[moogle]

You answered yourself before you asked the question.

No idea what I was thinking when I asked that

I guess I shouldn't expect much from it as most probably a portion of the money spent making it went on painting and decorating it

[this_is_gav]

lol, budget, I was expecting a £150 board and to find I was wrong to tell people the prices would never come that low.

They will with P55, when Core i7 and Core i5 start going mainstream. This is X48-style 'extreme' level remember. Q3 seems to be when Core i* is intended to take off properly.

As for this board... I'll stick with my slightly more expensive UD5 thanks. Wouldn't want a board decorated with SLI everywhere either, but thankfully it seems a bit too cut down at this price to consider it anyway.

[drunkenmaster]

They will with P55, when Core i7 and Core i5 start going mainstream. This is X48-style 'extreme' level remember. Q3 seems to be when Core i* is intended to take off properly.

As for this board... I'll stick with my slightly more expensive UD5 thanks. Wouldn't want a board decorated with SLI everywhere either, but thankfully it seems a bit too cut down at this price to consider it anyway.

Thats not what I mean, and its not the same case.

The p55 will be cheaper, as it will be a much thinner pcb, less layers, more manufacturing plants setup for similar boards, less traces, less mem slots and an ever so slightly cheaper chipset.

The x48 is more expensive than the p45, because Intel set the chipset price. The pcb's, where they can make them, everything else is the same. You're paying a premium because people will pay the premium and Intel have decided to charge it. The x58 boards are expensive, just because they are that expensive to make. They won't drop in price because, they can't. Imagine a mobo making plant which takes orders from various oem's and sticks their design in, the components they want and set about making it. You add in extra layers and more complex circuitry and that production line just isn't set up to make anything but a X-layered dual channel standard board layout. The x58 means limited runs in few plants that are setup for it, and takes longer to make, the more layers and tracers, the higher the faulty rate in manufacturing so the lower yield(but then its mobo's, its not a huge difference but every 0.1% effects end price to us).

I said to everyone don't expect cheaper boards, its simply not going to happen. p55 will be cheap, but thats because its dual channel, not because the chipset is "that" much cheaper and it will outsell the x58 100 to 1, so will also be produced in 100x the quantity.

[this_is_gav]

Remember Dell sold (or sell) a Core i7 system for about 32p. Of course, it's not got the bells and whistles, and Dell do have massive buying power, but the board itself can't cost that much if they're selling a full system for so little.

I just think the enthusiast boards have a £30-50 premium over X38 and X48 because they can, though whether it's Intel charging a premium on boards sold separately, or it's just the likes of ASUS charging more, I don't know, but I don't think there's any aggressive pricing going on. Yeah, they might cost a little more to manufacture, but not that much.