Conclusive Thoughts

The major issue of X58M is in DDR3 OC performance. As indicate in the spec, DDR3 1333 can be achieved under the condition of overclocking. The default 133 MHz CPU clock can only reach DDR3 800 or 1066. Compare with other competitors, MSI X58M will require some improvement in this part.

Intel new LGA1156 CPU will become available in the market in two months. For the entry level X58, the price is around US$200 which is still quite competitive comparing with P55. My wild guess of the price for the middle to high grade P55 is around US$150-250. P55 will not be price competitive at beginning.

Pros
+ High performance Micro ATX of X58 product.
+ All Japanese made solid capacitors. Debug signal. Built-in power botton.
+ Support ATI CrossFire and NVIDIA SLI.
+ Rich BIOS options. Wide range of power voltage. Outstanding external clock.
+ Price competitive amongst available M-ATX X58 in the market.

Cons
- No cooling module above MOSFET
- DDR3 OC performance is not as good as expected.
- The temperature of northbridge is a bit high. Adopt larger cooling pipe will solve the problem.



The price of the MSI X58M is fairly competitive. The price of X58 is NT$5000, equivalent to US$152 ($170 @ Newegg.com) which is very attractive to the users who are looking for X58 platform with limited budget.