EVGA X58 SLI Micro LGA1366 Motherboard Review

Included Software

When we first reviewed the EVGA X58 3X SLI way back in January, we were thrilled with the E-LEET software package that EVGA came up with. It really was everything we could ask for in software for a motherboard. It offered overclocking within Windows, voltage adjustment in Windows, a clean interface that was very intuitive to use, and above all; it worked all the time. This was a new concept for bundled software with a motherboard, the "it working" part. Here we are some nine months later and while we still love E-LEET, nothing has changed.

The screen you see above of the driver/software installation CD that comes with the EVGA X58 SLI Micro - and all X58 motherboards from EVGA - hasn't changed either. This we are fine with. The interface is clean and represents the EVGA X58 branding well. We would have just liked to see some updates to E-LEET. We guess there are two ways to look at it, one, we want to see a great software be even greater. Or two, if it isn't broke, don't fix it. EVGA has clearly gone with the latter philosophy and we really can't fault them for it. E-LEET is about as good as it gets for motherboard software packages. Gigabyte's EasyTune 6 is pretty close but E-LEET just always works and is aesthetically better we feel. We'll be brief with our look at E-LEET since it has been covered a couple times before here & here.

We our using our overclocked settings to model E-LEET - sorry to ruin the surprise - and our first two tabs are almost identical to the older version of CPU-Z. This software is clearly modeled after the overclocking standard and we couldn't be more pleased about that fact. The CPU and Memory tabs simply display the current information about their respective headings.

The heart of E-LEET starts with the third tab labeled Monitoring. This is where we get a quick - single page - snapshot of what are system is doing as far as voltages, temperatures, and even fan speed. We mentioned earlier that we would have loved to see some upgrades to E-LEET by this time and one of those upgrades would be a logging feature of this page. The ability to log all the data streaming into this page the way Everest Ultimate does would be a nice little upgrade to the already stellar E-LEET software.

The next two tabs labeled Overclocking and Voltages is where we can control pretty much every aspect of our system from the CPU multiplier when Turbo is enabled to BCLK to voltages. Every voltage that is adjustable in the BIOS is also adjustable from the E-LEET voltages tab. As mentioned, the best part of E-LEET is the fact that it always works. We have been using E-LEET to overclock and adjust voltages on the fly since January and it never fails. Even when running the EVGA X58 Classified under LN2 at CPU frequencies in excess of 5.5GHz, E-LEET is used every time we reboot the system to bring clocks up and at -100C, it works like a dream.

The last tab of E-LEET is mostly for the About section but we also have the ability to validate our overclocks in the same manner CPU-Z does as well as the ability to setup profiles. These profiles can be triggered by key combinations and are a neat way to squeeze every last drop out of a system for benchmarking.

We don't want to harp on it but when you find something so good that normally fails so miserably, you want to give it praise. Bundled software packages have been a joke for a long time with motherboards and video cards. EVGA has really forced other manufacturers to step up their game in this capacity since introducing E-LEET and their GPU software Precision. EVGA didn't write brand new pieces of software, they took existing software packages used by enthusiasts and adapted them for their needs and have really done a great job with them both.