EVGA X58 3X SLI Classified LGA1366 Motherboard Review

Heat & Acoustical Testing

We are going to be limited to simply testing the PWM temperatures of the EVGA X58 3X SLI Classified despite many public cries for EVGA to implement NB temperature monitoring from within Windows. The same was the case with the original EVGA X58 board but the BIOS engineers either couldn't, or couldn't have been bothered to allow the NB temperatures - which can be monitored in the BIOS - to be available for monitoring by software in Windows. The NB temperature sender shares time with the off-die CPU temperature sender and only one can send data to the system in Windows. In the BIOS, the system alternates reading between CPU and NB temperature. All of us EVGA X58 users have been asking for an option in the BIOS to select either NB or CPU temperature data to be read while in Windows but to no avail.

Before we get into testing, we will have look at the passive NB, and PMW heat sinks that EVGA has designed for the Classified, let's get started.

As soon as EVGA started to release pre production images of the Classified cooling, it became apparent that they spent a lot of time in designing the heat sinks. The north bridge is covered by a large, but not too large as seen during the installation section, mass of cooling fins connected with a small network of heat pipes. The heat pipes lay over top of the north bridge and the south bridge heat sink conglomerating within the mass of cooling fins transferring the heat from the motherboard to the cooling fins for dissipation. As we can see in the photos above, the thermal paste application is quite good on the heat sinks.

As mentioned, the south bridge is connected to the north bridge cooling assembly through a single heat pipe. This design is very efficient and allows more than adequate cooling for the south bridge and NF200 chip while maintaining a low profile to accommodate a collection of large double slot cooled video cards. The thermal paste EVGA used is not the dry hard crusty stuff but a seemingly good quality paste that was still soft when we took the heat sink off. Although it is applied a little thick on the NF200 chip, the NB and SB had just the perfect amount.

The PWM heat sink is similar in idea to the original X58 SLI, but significantly different in design. The larger heat pipe travels across the PWM area and instead of folding up in a U shape, it curls through the entire assembly of cooling fins providing much more contact with the cooling fins to dissipate the heat. This design has also allowed for a shorter heat sink on the PWM area allowing much more room around the CPU socket for large CPU coolers. We never had problems with the original X58 3X SLI motherboard, but it did slightly limit some fan placement on the Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme cooler. This new PWM heat sink is completely out of the way and a much nicer design in our opinions.

Let's now have a quick look at the two different fan configurations we will be testing with to see just how good the passive cooling on the Classified is with, and without additional cooling fans.

On the left above we have a single 120mm fan pushing air through the Ultra 120-Extreme, and on the right we have our normal three fan setup with the TRUE utilizing two fans in push/pull, and a third ventilating the memory at the same time as the north bridge heat sink. We utilized our 24/7 overclock again for the PWM testing to push the board and quickly found out that the passive cooling might not be enough for a completely static setup.

With only the single fan pushing air through the TRUE, we actually had stability issues and couldn't even finish the 20 minute OCCT test we were running to gather our PWM temperature data. Without a NB sensor being able to be read in Windows, we had no way of telling whether the NB temperatures were getting out of hand or not. We attempted lowering the voltage and loosening the timings on the memory to eliminate it as the culprit but that didn't help either. There is the possibility that the CPU didn't like the extra 4-5C that it got up to with the single fan but our guess is that the PWM and/or NB, just couldn't handle the heat loads. It was a bit of a disappointing test to be honest. As it stands, we have two graphs of the PWM temps to show. One of 20 minutes with our triple fan setup and a 15 minute graph of our single fan setup as that seemed to be about as long as we could get the system to run for with just the one fan. Here are the OCCT charts taking the temperature reading from Everest.

PWM Temperature - 3 Fan Setup

PWM Temperature - 1 Fan Setup

Obviously the fact that we couldn't run the 20 minute stability test without the additional fans tells the whole story. The PWM charts above simply cement the fact that the passive cooling really does take a beating when pushed on the Classified. Ambient temperature was around 23-24C the entire time during testing so we aren't even in a hot case where temperatures could be much higher. It really does indicate that at some point, there needs to be air flow going over the NB/PWM heat sink assemblies if you are really pushing a system. This is again pretty disappointing because the entire culture behind this motherboard is overclocking. The EVGA forums are already in an uproar about having to add additional cooling to the north bridge heat sink so head over there for some tips if you run into an overheating situation.

We have to recall the X58 3X SLI for a minute and point out that it had an active fan on the NB. There were many users who complained about this and wanted passive solutions like the DFI or ASUS motherboards. If you read our DFI X58-T3eH8 review, it too suffered from exponentially higher PWM temperatures when additional cooling to the heat sink assemblies was removed. In the end it simply looks like the X58 chipset requires some form of active cooling to keep temperatures in check. With the slightest bit of airflow, however, the chipset cooling won't hold back even the largest of overclocks. This is going to be quite evident in a few short minutes when we release the hounds and let the Classified do what it was designed to do...bench!