Gigabyte X58-USB3 Intel X58 Motherboard Review

Final Thoughts
With Gigabyte’s offering of they are trying to get more people on to Intel’s X58 platform at a lower cost, although you are losing some features that we have found on many other X58 boards.  The X58-USB3 is build off the same design as the X58A-UD3R but you lose features like SATA 6GB/s support, eSATA, three-way graphics, optical S/PDIF support, IDE and my favorite the CMOS reset button.  Look at these features that are missing and ask yourself do you really use them?  SATA 6GB/s really has not taken off and if you are using a SATA II drive compared to a SATA 6GB/s drive you are not going to see a huge performance boost.  All of the other features that are missing I rarely use.  The one main feature this board does offer is USB 3.0.  USB 3.0 seems to be taking off much faster than SATA 6GB/s and we have already seen quite a few different products take advantage of the technology.

The board itself is built well and the design is good.  I had no issues installing a large heatsink on it and the components all seemed to be in the right place and not jumbled around.  Even though this board is considered budget board Gigabyte still uses solid Japanese capacitors.  The software bundle with this system is also good.  Besides the drivers and overclocking software you also get Gigabyte’s Dynamic Energy Saver 2, Norton Internet Security, and Gigabyte Cloud OC.

As far as performance and overclocking goes the X58-USB3 is solid as many Gigabyte motherboards are.  We had no issues with performance at all.  As far as overclocking goes we ran in to some issues with our processor, but from reading other reviews and the ability of the 2 previous Gigabyte boards we have reviewed overclocking should not be an issue.  Gigabyte includes the EasyTune 6 software which makes overlcocking for even the beginner easy.  If you are old school and want to go in to the BIOS, everything is nicely organized in the MB Intelligent Tweaker (M.I.T.).

If you are looking to get in to the X58 platform at a lower cost and can fore go some of the features missing on this motherboard then the Gigabyte X58-USB3 is the right motherboard for you.  Right now it is selling at my favorite online retailer for $179 with a $10 rebate, which makes it one of the most inexpensive X58 motherboards available.  Overall ThinkComputers gives the Gigabyte X58-USB3 Intel X58 Motherboard a 9 out of 10 score and our Good Value Award.

rating9 10 small TC award goodValue small

Pros:
– Solid design
– CrossFireX and SLI support
– USB 3.0 support
– Overclocking made easy
– One of the most inexpensive X58 boards available

Cons:
– Many features missing that are on higher-end boards

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