The new Intel Nehalem CPUs will fit the current-gen mobos, although, in order to get the most out of them, you’ll have to switch to a X58-powered motherboard. Asus and Gigabyte have already announced their upcoming models which should be launching at the same time the first Core i7 CPUs hit the market. MSI is also preparing an X58 model and Syndrome-OC have some exclusive info on this one.

The mobo is known as the Eclipse X58 and from what we can see in the pictures provided by the French site, MSI still has to add several things to the design before they actually get to commercialize it. The official specs are not yet out so what we see in the pictures is prone to suffer some slight modifications. Thus, it appears that the current layout includes three X16 PCIe, with the bottom two ones sharing bandwidth via a digital switch. There also are two PCIe x1 slots and two PCI slots on top of that. Since Nehalem offers support for triple channel DDR3 configurations, the MSI comes with six DDR3 memory slots that can be stuffed with up to 24GB of memory.

MSI included its latest DrMOS technology on this board, while the MOSFETs have been redesigned, coming now with a 10 phase PWM. Also present on the board are the Power, Reset, DLED and Turbo buttons, which hint at a overcloker-oriented solution. The Turbo button may instantly overclock your CPU or it could be enabling the Core i7 Turbo feature that Intel announced during IDF earlier this week.

Other features include a CMOS reset button, two PS/2 ports, eight USB 2.0 ports, two eSATA ports and a FireWire connector. There are no audio connectors, which could mean that MSI is going to include a separate PCIe sound card, possibly and X-Fi one. An outstanding feature is represented by the inclusion of no less than 10 SATA ports, with four of these connected to a third party controller.

More info can be found on the S-OC site.