NVIDIA held its 6th GeForce LAN this weekend on the USS Hornet aircraft carrier based in Oakland, CA and at that event EVGA took the time to show off its upcoming X79 Classified motherboard. As reported by the guys over at Legit Reviews, there will apparently by three different models available at the time of the Socket 2011, Sandy Bridge-E launch sometime in November.
With plans to release an SLI, FTW and Classified model, EVGA was showcasing the flagship Classified model on stage with overclocker Kingpin. You can see that the board above has some very unique layout points and features including five x16 PCIe slots (with a single x1) and support for Quad SLI all spaced out for large graphics cards. EVGA is using their enthusiast expertise to design a board specifically for power users it appears.
From the back panel it looks like the board will have 8 total USB 3.0 ports, dual Gigabit Ethernet, eSATA and Bluetooth.
Intel was also on the stage and showed off its new Socket 2011 and LGA1366/1155/1156 compatible self-contained water cooler with a custom design from Asetek. It should be available around the same time as the pending Sandy Bridge-E platform release, boxed and sold separately. Interestingly it was pointed out that the fan was designed and built by Intel directly which will "offer a superior single fan cooling solution also optimized for outstanding acoustics." I am eager to see what Intel was able to do differently than other cooling vendors.
There are more photos and details on the EVGA X79 Classified motherboard over at Legit Reviews so head over there for more!
I saw this board in person at
I saw this board in person at the LAN, they said they had it running BF3 on the big screen. They did not have it running at the booth afterwords. I am guessing they did not want to give out any secret benches or something. The board looks solid, to me at least, and the odd layout of two DIMMs on each side of the socket seem to work for the Corsair style water cooler.
One thing I didn’t like was the right angle power socket has exposed leeds, not a big deal but no one could find a bit of plastic so your finger does not ground the pins.
I would have liked fatter buttons for my fat fingers, but it isn’t a big deal.
The DIMM layout is basically
The DIMM layout is basically a requirement of the new X79 chipset and Sandy Bridge-E processors.
As for the exposed leads on the angled ATX connector, you’re right…that is an issue.
nice board, nice to see all
nice board, nice to see all those PCIe, I cant wait to see what ASUS has cookin for their ROG, even tho Intel pooched the feature list. Quad channel vs duel will be interesting to see how it affects performance.
Correct me if I am seeing
Correct me if I am seeing this improperly, but 6 SATA PORTS!!! You have to got to be out of your mind on a top tier motherboard like that. Who in their right mind is okay with 6 SATA ports on tier 1 motherboards!!?!! They should have added a controller if they couldnt make due with the onboard X79 chipset to do it. Just insulting. Now we would have to waste one or two slots to add on RAID cards just to get back to what it should be. Just crazy. In this day and age it should have been no LESS than 10 ports on tier 1. I would expect 12 to 14 though.
After you waste 2 or 3 ports on just SSD drives, you would have two ports for storage drives, only to leave one port for a single optical drive. Again, mental on this class of board and will not go over well at all.
leave it to EVGA to make the
leave it to EVGA to make the cheapest and shittiest looking motherboards no matter what year or model