The ASRock X58 Extreme3 proved to be a solid contender throughout the battery of tests. Throughout all the benchmarks I performed on it, there weren’t any areas that it fell significantly behind in. Being able to hit a nearly 4.1GHz overclock is no small feat and isn’t achievable by all motherboards. I am also confident this board has more to give for the person that has the time to dial it in.
The only aspect of the ASRock X58 Extreme3 that I wasn’t excited about was the placement of the audio header. The design of the ASRock X58 Extreme3 has it next to the rear I/O panel and it’s a bear to hide wires that you need to run over the top of the board. Aside from that there were really no other gripes about the ASRock X58 Extreme3, well, aside from the placement of the floppy disk connector. ASRock most likely could have taken it off and no one would have noticed.
Above is one feature that I was impressed with, aside from the performance. That’s the spacing of the first two PCIe x16 slots. Anytime that I have run ATI’s Crossfire or NVIDIA’s SLI while using the EVGA X58 Tri-SLI, I have run into heat issues on the first card. I always run the cards in the two x16 PCIe slots instead of one x16 and one x8 and that puts them right next to each other. That blocks the airflow from the first card, and what air it does get has already been heated by the back of the second card. Using the ASRock X58 Extreme3 there is an additional slot between the first two PCIe x16 slots. The first card is still getting some warm air from the second card but now it has some room to breathe.
Legit Bottom Line: Top of the line performance! Rock bottom pricing of only $199.99! ASRock is definitely making some waves with the new ASRock X58 Extreme3!
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