Asus P6X58D Premium

ASUS P6X58D Premium

Late last fall, as both SATA 3.0 and USB 3.0 products were ramping up in production, a couple of motherboard vendors decided to take the opportunity to usher in the new technologies in style. What resulted was Gigabyte's X58A-UD7 and ASUS' P6X58D Premium. If you're familiar with either company's naming schemes, the model names alone will tell you that we're dealing with a high-end product. ASUS' board is the lesser-expensive of the two, at $300. Gigabyte's is $350, which owes its thanks to the built-in Northbridge water block. The fairer comparison would be Gigabyte's X58A-UD5 at $290 which is almost the exact same board but lacks that feature. That model happens to be the one driving my primary PC and so far I'm very pleased with it. As a high-end model, the P6X58D Premium includes pretty much everything you need, and most likely a bit more on top for good measure. While the board does tout great overclocking, and even "extreme" overclocking, like all Premium models this one is designed to be the ultimate all-around board. If you're what you'd consider a hardcore overclocker, ASUS' Rampage or Maximus boards might better suit you. Although the P6X58D came to market a couple of months prior to Gulftown, Intel's six-core processor architecture, ASUS touted full support upon its release.