Sapphire PB-CI7S41X58 Pro Reviews

Sapphire is very well known for its video cards based upon AMD chips they have had a few motherboards based upon AMD chipsets as well. With the launch of the Pure Black X58 motherboard Sapphire has taken the next step into building a brand that doesn’t just do video cards and steps into the Intel LimeLight. The Pure Black X58 board is great for those wanting a 3-card Crossfire setup as the spacing between slots is perfect without blocking anything.

If you are in the market for an Intel X58 motherboard with the latest features and support for CrossfireX configurations, the Sapphire Pure Black X58 motherboard may just be the board for you!

When you do a quick overview of the Sapphire Pure Black X58 motherboard, things look very promising. With two SATA 6GB/s ports, five SATA 3GB/s ports, eight USB 2.0 ports, two USB 3.0 ports, a FireWire port, a eSATA port, an onboard Bluetooth receiver, and neat user-friendly features like voltage read points, onboard power and reset buttons, and a debug LED display, this is indeed a motherboard with specifications worthy of its $270-280 price tag. And the situation starts looking even better once you notice that there are an impressive four mechanical PCI-E x16 slots, a rarity even among upper-end X58 motherboards.

So you say the X58 chipset is getting long in the tooth after a few years? Well yes and no. It's still Intel's premier platform and you have technologies being released that consumers want but can't find on other platforms. So, the release of this board is not late to the market but just right with the offered feature set. It looks as though Sapphire has improved their motherboards and have chosen Intel's top platform to show off their manufacture and design capabilities. Add in the P67 board they have produced and the mini ITX Fusion APU boards getting ready to explode onto the market and Sapphire has set themselves in a solid position in the motherboard business. The Sapphire Pure Black X58 delivers great performance with the latest feature set and would be a great option for consideration with your socket 1366 Intel based build.

The variety of connections available on the board is impressive, and the addition of the legacy PATA socket is a welcome one. Despite marketing to the contrary the Pure Black is not an overclocker's board, the budget power phase design makes sure of that. It's also a shame there isn't a second x16 PCI-E socket, and understanding though we are of the lack of SLI, it's a feature you can find in cheaper boards.

Sapphire have not only put a board together that looks great, offers some great features with little extras like Bluetooth 2.1 being included, but they've managed to create a legitimately fast board that performance users will probably be interested in, too. The bottom line is that Sapphire have cemented themselves as a company that offers good quality products through their video cards. We can't see how that won't transition to their motherboards.