Sapphire first became a known brand due to its ATI graphics cards, and they were known for virtually no connections to the other camp. However, from time to time, this company happens to present a new motherboard every now and then. We say “happens to” because they are mainly focused on graphics cards in their production portfolio, while their motherboards are more of a one-off experiment (similarly to XFX back in the day). In the era of the P67 chipset and Sandy Bridge CPUs, as well as Intel’s hints at releasing the Extreme Z68 platform soon, Sapphire has opted to present a motherboard based on the X58 controller logic. Truth be told, Intel’s X58 is still the fastest available solution, especially since it’s able to house very fast hexa-core Intel CPUs, but this still feels like a risky move on Sapphire’s part. Either way, we found Sapphire’s Pure Black X58 in the mail and got down to work almost immediately.
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The motherboard has an exquisite design, however subjective this category may be; for a piece of hardware, it’s just beautiful. The dominating tones are black and blue. However, the truly standout feature of this motherboard’s appearance is the massive northbridge cooler, connected to the Pure Black X58’s power section cooler by an 8 mm heatpipe. Having in mind the dimensions of the cooler, it was clear that heat wouldn’t be a problem with this motherboard; not only did it not heat up significantly later on, but it remained warm even during heavy-duty overclock. Pay attention, though - the dimensions of the cooling body on the northbridge are 49 x 70 x 39 mm, which could pose a problem if a larger CPU cooler needs to be mounted.. The dimensions of the FET cooling body are 38 x 97 x 20 mm. Another commendable feature is Pure Black X58’s backplate, while cooling bodies are attached to the chipset/FETs with thermal pads. We believe that thermal paste is a better solution, but as there was no sign of overheating, we have no right to condemn Sapphire for this.
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The layout is generally very good. The motherboard has three PCI-E 2.0 x16 slots, a single first-gen PCI-E x16 slot, and a now already ancient PCI slot. PCI-E 2.0 x16 slots work in 16x/8x/8x mode, while the fourth PCI-E x16 works in x4 mode. Although you’ll understand what an overclocking/gaming jewel this motherboard is by the end of this article, we have to admit that NVIDIA users may be disappointed, since the motherboard doesn’t support the SLI setup. Rumour has it that NVIDIA explicitly denied the SLI licence to Sapphire due to their tight cooperation with AMD. However, enthusiasts have been using SLI on X48 motherboards for quite a while now, despite the fact that, unlike X58, that chipset has never explicitly supported SLI at all. Therefore, all we can say is, Google it all a bit, you may be pleasantly surprised. The northbridge and DIMM slots have 3-phase voltage filtering, while the CPU has 8 phases all to itself. Also present are two BIOS chips, as well as a microswitch for switching the active BIOS. The ever-useful BIOS reset button is also there, and so are power and reset buttons. All mentioned switches are located at the very bottom of the motherboard, which could be a problem if the lowest PCI-E slot is occupied by a longer graphics card, as they’re hardly accessible that way. Placing them near the 24-pin ATX connector would’ve been a far better solution, but what can you do…
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Enclosures with a front USB 3.0 port are amassing on the market; however, Pure Black X58 only has two of these on the bracket in the back, with no option of connecting the controller to the front panel of the enclosure. We’ve already met Realtek’s ALC892 (7.1) HD audio codec, and it remains an entirely adequate audio chip to date; the same could be said about Marvell’s gigabit LAN adapter, namely 88E8057. We’ll also commend the inclusion of a Bluetooth 2.1 module, which is very useful with all the Androids, iPhones and whatnot going around all the time.
