EVGA X58 Classified - Trophy Board
by Rajinder Gill on May 8, 2009 3:30 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Our retail board arrived last week and now we aim to tie up the loose ends we left in our first look using the engineering sample (ES) board. The loose ends revolve around cooling, additional heavy OC stuff (for the intended audience), and functionality.
Not many people can afford a $449 motherboard. In fact, we seriously doubt anyone in his or her right mind would pay that much for a motherboard not installed in a server responsible for a company's business. However, there are the few, the proud, the extreme benchmarking crowd who swoon over products like this one.
We have spent a lot of time with this board. Probably too much time, once we looked over the logbook and thought back to the first day our early engineering sample board arrived in the labs. We were there during the development phase and stuck with it all the way through to its release. We never regretted the journey and sound like sentimental fools at this point, but it's not too often a product like this comes along in our business.
It is an interesting product and one we cannot put down long enough to write a ten thousand-word diatribe for it. This board is a beast; it makes no apologies for its cost, its purpose, or in your face configuration. It only asks that you have enough knowledge about overclocking to get the most out of it. That really is the crux of this board as it is all about overclocking.
For those not interested in extreme overclocking or wanting a trophy board in their pimped out case, there are much better values in the land of X58. Keep this in mind as our follow up today concentrates on overclocking and not general performance. The board performs just as well as any other X58 motherboard when it comes to running Excel or transcoding the latest movie. In 3D gaming, it is a couple of percent slower than the boards without the NF200, but that penalty is never noticeable without a benchmark.
If this is a deal breaker for you and you would like to play with the Classified design sans NF200, you will be pleased to know this option is now available on a non-NF200 model (E760) that comes in at a slightly lower price of $399. We cannot address the performance loss or overclocking ability of A vs. B at this point, as our non-NF200 Classified board has not arrived. However, we will hedge our bets that performance figures in most standard hardware configurations will be the same as what we have already experienced, with the NF200 GPU intensive stuff 1-2% behind the non-NF200. We think one advantage the NF200 board might have is in extreme overclocking as the load on the X58 is reduced, but more on that later.
For now, let's look at what the NF200 Classified can do in full retail form when teamed up with the right components and is properly tuned.
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JackFoobar - Tuesday, May 12, 2009 - link
Yea, and Hechler & Koch in Germany hasn't shipped any US parts in 4 months. While it's unrelated to computers, it's a similar issue. Overseas shipments have been slacking since the election.C'DaleRider - Friday, May 8, 2009 - link
I suppose you can fix a 40mm fan to the sink, but has anyone tried a solution like the Antec Spot Cooler aimed at the sink instead? I've found the Spot Cooler to be a very flexible solution to difficult cooling problems.icingdeath88 - Friday, May 8, 2009 - link
Neat, good find. I'd never seen anything like that before. bet it would be kinda loud and whiny though.QChronoD - Friday, May 8, 2009 - link
I enjoy reading about boards like these, especially when you guys get to break speed records and all that.But would it be too difficult to put together a small writeup every few months on the new boards that have come out. I want to upgrade my old A64X2 system to an i7 920, but the damn motherboards are so expensive. I can find prices on boards easily, but its hard to find reviews about many of them from places that I trust to know what they're doing.
takumsawsherman - Friday, May 8, 2009 - link
Not only are the motherboards expensive, most don't seem worth it. I won't mention the fact that this $400 board doesn't even have Firewire 800. The $600 mac mini has this, and that includes a processor, graphics, and hard drive, and and enclosure. Oh wait, I just did.Rajinder Gill - Friday, May 8, 2009 - link
I'd have thought people who are still intent on Firewire do what you did - buy an Apple. I hardly think those that benchmark for fun are bothered about Firewire. In fact, I happen to know that most disable it in the BIOS. Others that care about any form of high speed interface are more concerned about the next step for USB. It's not the intended market of the board at all IMO.JAG87 - Friday, May 8, 2009 - link
QFT. What do you need firewire for? I always disable it together with onboard audio. If you need fast access to external storage you should be using eSata, plus USB 3.0 is coming and it will make firewire obsolete for good.Anyway my own opinion of the board having owned it since day 1, is that it's simply the best overclocking desktop board ever made. The only boards that have touched the same heights as the classified are some DFI boards. The difference with DFI is, you have to put up with ridiculous bioses that have settings which neither you are I have ever heard of before, and their support compared to EVGA.
I have a shitty C0 chip and I can clock it at 200x21 without touching any voltages on the board just vcore. It all depends on the chip, but the board itself can do 200 bclk at stock VTT, which is 1.2V for this board rather than 1.1V. If you don't have crazy IMC demands like Rajinder, you can leave every voltage at stock and still achieve 200 bclk. That's just amazing IMO.
takumsawsherman - Saturday, May 9, 2009 - link
Well, if you ever want to record music using your computer (Cubase, etc), good luck with USB-XLR interfaces. Unless you are using Firewire, be prepared to waste a lot of time recording over and over because USB falls off too quickly.Meanwhile, I'll take a Firewire 800 external drive interface over eSATA any day. They are far more durable when you are actually using the plug for it's intended purpose (plugging and unplugging and moving the drive, etc).
Then, of course, you can daisy chain your devices. It'd be one thing if this was a $150 board. But for $400 you should be getting the best of everything. Nothing should be second rate so that they can save $5.
erple2 - Sunday, May 10, 2009 - link
You're complaining that this board doesn't have some feature for an audience it wasn't intended for? Is it just me, or does that sound a little ... odd?I suppose you're also the type to complain that the necessary sound and video equipment to record a live concert doesn't fit into a Lotus Elise?
Honestly, you need to realize who the intended audience for this product is. This board is intended, rather strictly, for the overclocking crowd, not for the general public that wants to use some FireWire peripherals.
JackFoobar - Tuesday, May 12, 2009 - link
I seem to see this mentioned in every review on anandtech. What's the obsession with that interface? Nobody I know uses it unless they are apple people. I'd like the best of everything on the board too, but firewire isn't the best of anything. Why bother.