Sapphire Pure Black X58 Motherboard Review

USB 3.0 Performance Testing

HD Tach is a low level hardware benchmark for random access read/write storage devices such as hard drives, removable drives (ZIP/JAZZ), flash devices, and RAID arrays. HD Tach uses custom device drivers and other low level Windows interfaces to bypass as many layers of software as possible and get as close to the physical performance of the device possible.

Testing of the USB3 was done using the SUNBEAMTECH Airbox USB3.0 External Hard Drive Enclosure. The drive used was a Crucial Technology RealSSD C300 SSD.

Benchmark Results: The USB 3.0 speeds of the Sapphire Pure Black X58 were fair. The average read speed was near the bottom of the group of motherboards with 106MB/s, which is 10.8% below the top performing Gigabyte P67A-UD4. The average write speed of the Sapphire Pure Black is sitting pretty at 111MB/s which is still slower than the Gigabyte P67A-UD4, though only by 4.6%.

HD Tune Pro 4.01 is an extended version of HD Tune which includes
many new features such as write benchmark, secure erasing, AAM setting,
folder usage view, disk monitor, command line parameters and file
benchmark.

Our testing of the USB 3.0 performance was done using the SUNBEAMTECH Airbox USB3.0 External Hard Drive Enclosure. The drive used was a Crucial Technology RealSSD C300 SSD.

Benchmark Results: Our numbers for HD Tune are quite similar to above. The Sapphire Pure Black X58 had an average read speed of 104.3MB/s which is 8% slower that the top board, and an average write speed of 107.23MB/s which is only 4% slower.