only extra 8-pin connector on mobo is not such an expensive gimmick
But then i think all these fancy 48 phase ludocratic gimmicks unnecessary but people obviously love them. And all that capacitors and coils are the real overkill -- they're really thinkig green and to reduce consuption
. And extra eps 8-pin connector is just smart thing to complement all that c-ap cause without it all we really have is overkill cpu pwm that lacks proper power distribution from power supply.
LOL they must milk some money on enthusiastic X58 that still after 1.5yrs have only i7 920
as best mainstream value proc .... and probably no value i7 930 based on 6-core chip in reasonable timeframe.
Cmon you didnt really expect that they remove that pcb space waste connectors
and include something more useful like extra two sata3 connectors, not that board lacks of sata2 and c-appy jmicron sata2/eide controler, but for the price they could integrate 2x Marvell 88SE9128 (pcie x1 !!!! -> 2x sata 3.0) RAID 0/1 controller or something better.
But then there's good old floppy for life saving rescue feature if DualBIOS somehow fails
Wait does this fancy mobo even feature that nitty life saving DualBIOS :facepalm:
And they call it
*overclockers choice mobo* while motherboard LACKS OF EasySwitch RESET/PWR-ON feature ... These days even budget manufacturers include thes value gimmicks on their enthusiastic class mobos.