Intel DX58SO2 Pro Reviews

The Intel Extreme Series DX58SO2 motherboard makes a great choice for buyers of the lowest end or highest priced LGA1366 processors. If you are one of our normal readers though and need to balance your performance and budget, then you will still be better off looking to Intel’s Core i7-2000 series of processors and maybe even a new Z68-based motherboard that finally unlocks all that platform's capabilities.

The Intel DX58SO2 X58 Motherboard has the features needed to make it a great choice for any system. If you are building an Intel X58 system, this could be the X58 Motherboard you need!

This mainboard not only looks normal but also has modern functionality, rich accessories, overclocking potential, good performance and impressive energy efficiency. The only serious problem we can find with it is that the BIOS interface remains as unfriendly as before, but you can put up with this. After all, you can set up your mainboard once and use it for many years without changing anything in its BIOS options. Hopefully, Intel mainboards will continue to improve, and so will their BIOS. Therefore, despite the above expressed criticism we are proud to award Intel DX58SO2 mainboard with our Editor’s Choice title. It truly deserves your attention as it is a well-made, high-performance, reliable, functional and energy-efficient product from the processor manufacturer.

No matter how many extreme monikers and skulls Intel puts on the box and the motherboard itself, the DX58S02 is still not a true enthusiast class product. Enthusiast motherboards today are all about feature set. Interestingly, Intel is the company that forced this by pulling all of the important controllers onto the processor die. The only way a motherboard company continues to set itself apart from the pack is through motherboard feature sets, and surely those for enthusiasts. It seems that Intel has forgotten that it has to live by its own rules. ASUS, MSI, and Gigabyte simply smoke the Intel DX58S02 when it comes to enthusiast X58 chipset boards. The DX58S02 is a good motherboard, it is just not a good enthusiast motherboard by comparison.