Since the arrival of Intel's latest Core i7 processors, X58 motherboards have been springing up everywhere in Sim Lim Square. But what would a Core i7 system be without triple-channel DDR3 memory? Lots of those have been appearing as well.

First up, the brand new DFI LanParty UT X58-T3eH8 is made for all you UV lighting freaks out there. This board has the two Firewire 400Mbps ports, eight SATA 3Gbps ports, 12 USB 2.0 ports and 8 channel Realtek HD audio. But those are all standard features - what's interesting is the cooling system - which stands out even among the crowd of heatpipe-equipped motherboards of today.

The DFI LanParty UT X58-T3eH8 currently retails at Fuwell and PC Themes for S$529.

Nothing less than a humongous box. And yes, there's a plastic window hidden underneath that top flap.

The motherboard from top down. Just about everything is UV reactive, from the DIMM slots to the PCIe slots and even the SATA ports! The cooling system DFI has designed is quite huge even by today's standards. Hiding underneath that massive heatsink are a bunch of CPU power delivery MOSFETs.

That big gap there in between the PS/2 ports and the other ports is for what DFI calls the "Flame Freezer" - an optional heatsink which provides even more cooling capability to what seems like an already sufficiently robust setup.

To install the "Flame Freezer", a small metal plate has to be unscrewed first...

 

This is how the heatsink looks like after it is mounted on the heatsink. Despite being held down by the metal plate it can still swing quite freely.

The northbridge heatsink has a pretty LanParty badge affixed to it. The "Flame Freezer" may also be attached to this heatsink.

There are eight SATA 3Gbps ports on the T3eH8 - the two yellow ones are controlled by the JMicron JMB363 while the other 6 originate from the ICH10R southbridge. These are all angled at 90 degrees - no doubt to prevent any conflicts with extremely long graphics cards such as the GTX280 or the HD4870 X2.

There are power and reset switches onboard which would be convenient in a caseless setup. Rather than including a dedicated Clear CMOS button, DFI has opted to allow users to press both buttons at once to reset BIOS settings.

A separate module houses the Realtek ALC889 audio codec and its outputs. This is attached to the mainboard via a flexible cable, which allows it to be installed in any of the expansion slots.

To match the color scheme of this board, bright green UV reactive SATA and IDE cables are included.