XL-ATX in a Cooler Master HAF 932?

[XencryptX841]

I was wondering if the new EVGA Dual Socket Intel LGA 1366 Motherboard For CES 2010 would fit in my Cooler Master HAF 932 case... i believe the case can only hold up to E-ATX but was wondering if when this motherboard came out there was any way to squish it into my case?

 

[sailer]

Here's the best way that I know of, and have used. Get the dimensions of the board. Then scribe them on a piece of cardboard and cut the cardboard to that size. Take the cardboard template and try to fit it into your case. That will tell you quick if its even possible to fit the motherboard into the case. But there's more. If the cardboard template does fit, then place your graphics cards into the approximate areas that they will occupy and see if they cause any interference.

I suppose a good question is why you want such a motherboard. Besides the expensive of the board, which will probably be high, you will have the added expense of at least three more ram sticks and one more CPU. By the way, from what I've read so far, the required CPU design is not the normal 1366 i7 CPU, but a specialized CPU that will be expensive. If you're a gamer or casual user, this board, with its added expenses, won't do you a bit of good over a normal performance board with one CPU. For one thing, games aren't made to address multiple CPUS and ram arrays. If you run business applications or are planning to make it into a serious and dedicated folding machine, then it probably would be worthwhile.

Personally, I'm thinking about getting one for my office, but I'll wait for reviews and total of the package pricing before getting any hopes up.

 

[killah573]

Sailer,

Your point about the board requiring something other than a "normal 1366 i7 CPU" is correct; this board most likely requires Nehalem-EP processors, which have two QPI Links each (where one is used to connect the processors) instead of just one on a "consumer level" LGA-1366 CPU (which connects to the chipset).

However, that doesn't mean that they are going to be very expensive. At the time of writing, a Nehalem-EP processor (E5507) can be obtained from Newegg for the same money as a Core-i7 930 processor ($289.99). It does have only half the L3 Cache (4 MiB vs. 8 MiB) and a somewhat lower clock frequency (2.23 GHz vs. 2.8 GHz), but since you would have two processors, I don't know if it would actually matter unless you were a High Performance Computing enthusiast.

The appearance of the board also suggests that it was made for enthusiast gamers; if it was merely for server applications (or possibly even workstations), I doubt that such detail would have been paid to its aesthetics, or whether it would even have been made by EVGA at all.