People have been overclocking computer hardware for quite some time. Overclocking is not that hard at all, but to really get the highest achievable overclocks you need a motherboard that can take the punishment. Over the past 2 years we have seen efforts from many different manufacturers, but these efforts were targeted at 2 different demographics, overclockers and gamers. So you had all of these boards that had all the features that gamers and overclockers wanted, but what if you just wanted the overclocking features? Today we are taking a look at motherboard that gives you all of those overclocking features and cuts out all the extra “fat” that is not needed. This board has been designed from the ground up to be best overclocking motherboard for the X58 platform. The motherboard I am talking about is the X58A-OC from Gigabyte, let’s see how far we can push this board.
Special thanks to Gigabyte for providing us with the X58A-OC Intel X58 Motherboard to review.
Packaging
The X58A-OC comes in a rather plain retail box. On the front there is a large X58A-OC logo and it says “Overclocking Motherboard”. The back of the box is where you will find all of the information on the board. It goes in to detail on all of the features of the board.
Opening the box up the board and accessories are nicely packed inside. Getting everything out you have the X58A-OC motherboard, I/O shield, 2 SATA 6GB/s cables, 2-way SLI bridge, 3-way SLI bridge, 2-way CrossFire bridge, voltage cables, driver DVD, user manual and installation guide. The voltage cables attach to the voltage headers on the motherboard for easy monitoring of voltages.
