Introduction

Since the release of Core-i7 there has been a steady release of performance motherboards which allow consumers the opportunity to create a great high specification system. In the past getting the best performance always meant using ATX boards even though technology in just about every other area has been getting more compact.

In the past few months that has changed though and today we have two very impressive looking X58 boards on our test bench which are micro-ATX based...and still manage to fit in features like support for 6 memory sticks and SLI/CrossFire. In addition to that we have a third product which proves that Socket 775 Core2 users are not being left behind and that it is possible to create a high performing yet cost effective micro-ATX system on the last generation processors.