Intel DSX58SO motherboard
The Intel DX58SO - also known as Smackover - looking lean and mean in black.
There's plenty of big-ass cooling around the board but the heatsinks do become warm to the touch. We're glad that they're all passively-cooled, though.
There's enough room around the socket area to fit in the reference cooler with consummate ease. The only slightly sticky point is with the two ASICs next to the top-left mounting hole - they come close to fouling the heatsink.
We're befuddled why Intel would choose to launch a board with four DIMM slots, knowing that the memory controller works best in tri-channel mode.
The ICH10 is a known quantity.
Another slight letdown comes in the form of only two PCIe x16 slots. We appreciate that few users will opt for a three- or four-card setup, but Intel really should have added it here.
The backplane is chock-full of goodness, though, including dual eSATA support.
