X58 Showdown: ASUS Rampage II vs. MSI Eclipse

Although the X58 brings with it some new advancements that necessitate more board real estate, the Eclipse itself does not seem to be overly crowded in any one area, nor do we find any obvious spacing issues.  Due to changes within the CPU, the socket area is slightly larger than in the past to accomodate not only the new LGA-1366 socket but the larger coolers that come with the Core i7.  Some solid capacitors are found on one side of the socket, while the Hi-C capacitors are found lengthwise between the socket itself and a row of chokes, cooled by the heatsinks placed directly on top.

MSI Eclipse SLI 

Cooling measures seem somewhat tame with a low-rise heatsink over the South Bridge, connected to the the larger heatsink over the North Bridge by way of two heat pipes.  Even this cooler seems rather slim in profile with a round set of fins that rise vertically away from the PCB.  These remain separate from the other nearby heatsink, all of which rely on passive cooling only.  There are no active measures taken at all, as well as no ventilation access to the exterior of the chassis.  Spring-loaded clips help keep each of the heatsinks in place, although one board we received had a few of these broken off in transit rendering the board inoperable.

Of course, one of the main things that sticks out is the 6 DIMM slots, which offer support for three channels of DDR3.  Joined channels are colored either blue or black, and unlike builds of the past, you start from the outside first.  That is, the black slots must be populated before the blue ones.  There's not much room between these slots and the edge of the board, so nothing else gets placed here other than the 24-pin power connection.  With little space to give, the floppy drive connector finally meets its end here.