Intel's reference motherboard: any good?

[marcusmiller360]

Intel's BOXDX58SO LGA 1366 board is a bag of mixed tricks. On one hand, it has 2 full PCIe 2.0 lanes, 8 USB ports on the motherboard (and room for another four), 2 e-sata ports, firewire, and 10 channel audio support (!).

On the other, 4 DIMM slots (3 triple channel, 1 single channel, and Intel says it works best with just 3 DIMMs). And then there is the other thing that I, personally, do not know: overclocking.

I've found this motherboard (still in box with the plastic on it) for $160, and that's a steal compared to its regular $250 price point. But I've heard bad things about this motherboard and overclocking...

I wouldn't take it up past 3 gigahertz, probably even barely touch that mark. Maybe more like 2.93, the same as the 940 (but I'd be using a 920 chip). Whats the verdict on overclocking with this board, is it worth it or even possible? I know about the memory not going to DDR3-1600 very well, but I figure I can clock that down to DDR3-1333 whilst bringing the processor up.

 

[Raviolissimo]

in general their motherboards are stable and some (975XBX2) have even had a good reputation for OC'ing.

but, a core i7 board with just 4 memory slots - no thanks !

 

[razorblaze42]

I dont really know but I would think that any mobo would be able to run such a small overclock. Even a Intel BOX.
Really makes you wonder what Intel was thinking putting 4 dimms slots on a mobo thats designed for tripe channel memory. What engineer was smoking crack the night before?

3-4 slots, does it matter? we all know 3 slots are recommended at this time, the 4th does work with some performance reduction. The mystery 4th could allow some expansion in the future, especially given this board has a removable bios chip.