EVGA’s W555 Dual-Socket Motherboard Redefines High-End

Just over a week ago, EVGA sent out a teaser image to its Twitter feed that showed off an upcoming motherboard like no other. The first major feature is its size, which is too large for even the most common full-tower chassis’ out there, and the second would be the fact that it includes two CPU sockets and twice the number of DIMM slots compared to a typical Nehalem-based motherboard.

No surprise, EVGA had the board on display at its private suite in the luxurious Wynn hotel, and I have to say… this is easily one of the most jaw-dropping products I’ve seen at the event, for a couple of different reasons. When I first saw this board, I immediately thought of not only “Skulltrail 2”, but a Skulltrail 2 that might actually be affordable to the enthusiast.

Well, I’m not getting that second wish, but this could indeed be considered a Skulltrail 2 in some regards, as it’s enthusiast-targeted and includes support for two CPUs, which thanks to the chipset, have to be Intel’s Xeon’s, not Core i7’s. There’s not only two CPU sockets, but twice the number of DIMM slots as well, with support for up to 48GB of DDR3 memory.

EVGA has quickly been rising in the ranks where overclocking is concerned, so it’s no surprise that the company wants to go all out on such a high-end product. In addition to the two 8-pin motherboard connectors, there are also two 6-pin PCI-E power connectors to be used for increased power delivery, which may actually be needed for extreme overclocks – especially when Gulftown arrives.

When overclocking four or more GPUs, the power to the PCI-E slots is going to be a bit lacking, and for that reason, EVGA includes yet another 6-pin PCI-E power port directly above the slots. The company’s recent GTX 285 Classified cards feature 3x 6-pin power connectors, so just picture the number of such connectors that could possibly be used here!

About a year ago, EVGA brought on legendary overclocker Peter “Shamino” Tan to help design the company’s motherboards, primarily on the overclocking side, and he’s put huge focus on this board in particular in recent months. You can expect it to bring both overclocking and high-performance to a new level when the board is released within the next few months, in all it’s $600+ glory.