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(More customer reviews)This is going to be a "mini-review" of the E760-A1 Classified Motherboard by our favorite silicon-sandwich maker, EVGA. Believe it or not Amazon.com gave me a deal on this "mainboard" or I'd still be staring at a standard EVGA BL-132-X58 3 x SLI Motherboard, and not this pretty Classified baby that's inside of my newest PC right now. So, thanks to Amazon.com, for making a bad thing right and taking care of business with me and the Classified.
I actually want to thank them a LOT for turning me onto this beautiful sculpture that's inside my HAF 932 "highly mod'd" PC since yesterday at about 9AM PST, because this is The Kind, as we say in Hawaii. Actually, it's Da Kine, which is KUHL, KUHL, KUHL! The most striking visual appeal of this board is the awesome black and red finish to *everything* there is, ie the theme is repeated from the DIMM slots, to the PCI-Express slots, to the CPU area, it's all mirrored in visually stunning graphics, colors, and finished, blackout Chrome metal, and a mirror-finished motherboard itself. Like WOW! Visually it's a 20+ on a 10-Scale, it just jumps out at you and says, "I am Class, and you may as well call me by my real name, 'Classified' before I whack you up side of da head!"
The board has *presence*, and features that beget a much better review than I am going to make tonight. All told, I have been up perhaps the better part of two days getting the new PC all gussied up in new Duds, including this beautiful thing, and my judgment and wit are on the wane, right about now...or I'd seriously get into the dialectics of the huge electronic masterpiece that this motherboard is. But I won't just now, promising to come back to this review and update it with impressions after a week, a month, heck, whenever I feel like it if you don't mind!
Wavey Davey gives this motherboard his solid 5-Stars ***** across the board, and I'll mention just a couple coup's that the board has that others do not:
1)There are 4 Full-Length 16/8 x Lane PCI-Express Slots, actually 5 (yes, that would be five!) with the single-lane slot for something like your X-Fi Fatal1ty Pro Sound Blaster card, like that...actually it's there for you to run, of course, Quad-SLI mode, if nothing else! How about that gamers? You could potentially, if you had enough power supply "firepower" and cables, (you'd need a minimum of a Kilowatt PSU to do this! [1000-Watts or higher!!])ie run 4 x 2 PSU-6-pin connectors to 4 matching cards, or rather 3 matching cards for gaming and that sort of deal (God forbid the scores with 3 cards in SLI mode!), and a 4th video card for "normal pursuits" like Folding@Home, doing Phys-X stuff, things like that.
2) Then there's the Custom Cooled North Bridge, I believe it's called (I'll research it and come back and change this if it's the South Bridge, hah-hah!). That black-anodized piece with an intricate and effective cooling heat sink setup looks so stealthy, and Darth-Vaderish, in all it's glory on the motherboard, that it will scare off heat! Well, would that it could...would be nice if it could, yah? And ON that North Bridge is a magically "glowing" LED "E" in EVGA Speak, the biggest, and baddest eletric LED graphical interface I've ever seen on a motherboard of anybody's making! WOW! It just looks positively stunning at night, or in a darkened room, to look inside your PC and see the "Glowing E" of EVGA, all nice and cozy on your motherboard. Nobody has that, for sure! This is unique!
3) The "running lights" in the Classified are also color-keyed along the company line, with a "red" ON button, normally it's green right? But not with this item, guys and gals! Red is "ON" and red is Good, so don't get confused and think that your motherboard is posting bad things and call Tech Support over at EVGA with a dire request for an explanation of this phenomenon...which looks Tres KUHL, like everything else about this motherboard does! It's just first class, and All First Class, from point to point, feature to feature, vs all the other boards for sale now.
Of course, the motherboard has the usual fare from EVGA, like the Digital Post Board at the lower, front edge of the board, conveniently located there for your perusal, and it will tell you the temp of the CPU at any given time, after full boot is made good, and up to then it's giving up all kinds of Post Codes, which are explained fully in the back of the rather massive "owners manual" that comes with the board. The "Activity Light" is Amber to Yellow-colored, so that's also a new wrinkle! At least the "Clear CMOS" button is still familiar Red, well, of course, it would be Red, right? Right!
The motherboard comes with a host of cables and things, a bunch of SLI-enabling cables for multiple Video Cards, different types of SLI (I later learned there are several(!) modes: SLI-2, SLI-3, and SLI-3 w/4th video card for Phys-X, FAH, or another monitor!). There are SATA cables, and otherwise some Molex connectors for your collection of fans and gadgets inside the case, something to help organize the deal so it won't look like a trash heap of wires in there!
There's also a Chrome-satin finish care portal arrangement, I believe it's called something particularly fitting, ie it's called the I/O Shield... It's the place where all the USB, FireWire, Ethernet, RJ-45, and other ports like PS2 ports, are, on the so-called back of the case....that's what they furnish you. There's also a combo FireWire and USB port gadget, which can be placed in any open PCI slot (like if you're a true aficionado you're going to HAVE a clear or open PCI slot...don't think so! at least not in mine anyway).
I will caution those of you with an eSATA port in the front of your PC, like I have with my HAF 932, that you will NOT be able to hook up that port normally, shall we say, with the Classified, if you plan on utilizing that single lane-PCI Express slot, AND the adjacent PCI-Express full-length 16X Lane slot plus the flat-motherboard SATA connector. There is no way in Hades that you can put two cards of any persuasion there, and still have the connector free for the SATA part of your front panel, so I had to Pasadena on using that Single-Lane PCI-Express port for my X-Fi Titanium Sound Blaster Fatal1ty Pro Card, and front panel for that matter! It would have been nice there, the my front eSATA port is very, very important to me because I've got some eSATA external equipment that I like to use with the PC, and I NEEDED THAT PORT hooked up!
Alternatively, you can hook up that front eSATA/SATA port to the regular motherboard SATA connectors, and NOT use that particular motherboard SATA connection, and then use all 5 PCI-Express Slots for whatever purposes you wish, end of that story! EVGA has it all covered, trust me.
That's about it for my 1st impressions of this total KNOCKOUT and DRAG ME DOWN motherboard. It is so visually stunning you will not believe it goes in the bottom of your computer! Crazy!! I love it, I mean my PC is stylin' like never before tonight, Gosh Darn It! Why did they have to make it so pretty, anyway?
Of course I didn't mention this one's No.1 purpose in all of the above gadgets, and stuff! It's meant for the Intel i7 "Nehalem" CPU, and all of the OVERCLOCKING possible, all you could do, and THEN SOME, because there are things to do to your CPU with this board that I wouldn't dream of telling Intel, for fear of warranty banishment! This is the Overclocker's Dream, if there ever was one, so come one, come all, it's the E-760 EVGA Classified for you if you want to overclock unlike any other overclocker on your street!
Come get it, this is the one!
Wavey Davey 5-23-2009
ADDENDUM, 6-29-2009
A couple things that comes to mind with this setup which I have learned to love, that I didn't mention with the above "mini-review" which was written hastily, under the influence of a lack of sleep, ie before I had time to actually experience all of the blessings that the Classified bestows on its owners:
1) ELEET, aka E-LEET Tuning Utility
This is something that you've got to use to truly appreciate, and only time and your creativity stops miracles from happening with it punched up in the control center, your desktop! ELEET allows for fine tuning, ie adding additional overclocking parameters to your initial overclock just to make things more stable, push the "envelope" higher than it already is, by adjusting virtually *all* of the important Voltage and Frequency adjustments available with Classified. Let me give an example:
Let's say you boot up to a 4167Mhz overclock, dialing in 19 X 219 QPI, but your real goal is 4257Mhz. Small things make all the difference in the world doing this sort of thing, and here's where ELEET comes into play...
Open ELEET, "Voltages" tab, where you can increase VCore a minute (minoot!) amount, CPU VTT Voltage an equally minute amount, then go to the "Overclocking" tab. Hit the Increase Mhz tab ten (10) little clicks, and BAM! Instantly after hitting "Apply Selection" things rock, and roll, for a second or two as the computer's hardward is "adjusted" by ELEET, you're at 4257Mhz, the elusive goal is reached!
ELEET is the only hardware overclocking utility built into the GUI in any computer/motherboard/CPU tandem that I know of, and it's very, very effective...so there you go, another EVGA 1st, first on the block, first at the race, and there at the finish to hand you the trophy!
2) North Bridge, South Bridge, motherboard features unique to Classified
The North Bridge and South Bridge in the Classified put the pedal to the metal so to speak, they are the operating hardware features of this board that distinguish it from all others. Without...Read more›
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EVGA 141-BL-E760-A1 X58 Classified SLI MainboardThe X58 3X Classified SLI Mainboard from EVGA is engineered for those who demand more than the best. Enthusiast layout supports 2 way, 3 way, and 3 way SLI with PhsX, 10 phase digital PWM with switching frequency up to 1333 KHz, 300 % more gold content in the CPU socket, dual 8-pin + 12V for up to 600 watts of CPU power, and high quality ESR and ESL film capacitors. Built with 100 % solid state capacitors, features include Intel X58/ICH10R chipset, 6 DIMM triple-channel DDR-3 1600 MHz + up to 24 GB of memory, VDroop control for maximum stability while overclocking, E-LEET tuning ability, EZ Voltage read points, 2 GB ethernet ports (10/100/1000 Mbs), 8 channel audio, onboard clear CMOS, power and reset buttons, onboard CPU temperature monitor, passive chipset heatsink, and EVGA SPD Utility which saves to the motherboard's bios. Product comes with a 1 year warranty and limited lifetime warranty if registered at www.evga.com within 30 days of purchase.
Click here for more information about EVGA 141-BL-E760-A1 X58 Classified SLI Mainboard
