recommend an X58 board

[mo' power]

Greetings. I have a new build coming up but I'm having difficulty choosing an X58 board. It appears that every board I look at will have it's pci slots covered if I use dual slot cards (fermi). Is it just an illusion?

I'm looking for a board that will handle sli+ a physx card at 16X16X8 and still be able to use my pci sound card. 16X16X4 would also be acceptable. I can go $250-$300 or a little more if necessary. I'll more than likely make my purchase the last thursday of this month before the HST rolls in.

Thanks for all your help.

[zsamz_]

personally i would tell you to get a rampage extreme II or III
msi big bang xpower looks promissing only thing is how good is the bios its 300$
i'd say wait a week or 2 so that they have time to sort out the bios

MSI Big Bang XPower - X58 mothetboard - w/ official support - XtremeSystems Forums

i want a second i7 rig so i'm waitin to see how good the board is looks verry promissing

i just bought the evga 3x sli on sale for 200 after rebate to try i wouldnt recomend it i sold it after 2 days

you gonna need a good size case

[mo' power]

I bought my case months ago. HAF 932. It'll be repainted and slightly modded. Build log coming soon. I was looking at the msi website and that board has no pci slots. The msi eclipse has the layout I'm looking for.

[fishingfanatic]

Have a look at the Asus P6X58D-E or the Premium for a little more. Good boards with new usb3 sata3. I'm using the bottom most slot for my pci-e 1 sound card due to crossfire in pci-e 16 1 and 2. The heat coming off of the cards was a concern, so I put that card on the bottom to avoid any issues.

[gingerbee]

as long as you stay away from asrock you should be good these seem to be the only boards that won't overclock very well

[stoanee]

Really not that many choices out there....

NCIX.com - Buy ASUS Rampage III Extreme ATX LGA1366 X58 DDR3 4PCI-E16 PCI-E4 CrossFire SLI SATA3 USB3.0 Motherboard - Rampage III Extreme In Canada.

[phoenixrage]

yea, I was looking at the gigabyte UD3, but figured i may want to move up to the UD5 for better chipset cooling.. but ended up with the asus R3E, I prefer the PCIe slot layout better... still in the box waiting for the rest of my parts to come in.

[fishingfanatic]

The ROG is a good choice. I think it may be an upgrade for myself a little further down the road.

[Zero82z]

If you mean a standard PCI sound card, then I think you're out of luck. Every X58 board I've seen will lose all its slots except for a top 1x PCI-E slot if three dual-slot video cards are used. I would suggest that you consider buying a new PCI-E sound card instead.

[Lpfan4ever]

Exactly. ATX boards usually have 7 slots. If 6 of those are used/covered by video cards, then it only leaves the top slot, which I only really ever see as a PCI-e 1x or 4x.