ECS X79R-AX (Black Extreme) Review

Introducing ECS X79R-AX

Over the past 12 months I have covered a number of ECS boards, from the Sandy Bridge and Fusion range, including one with a Hydra chip.  Looking back on those, there was a distinct running theme – a willingness to offer the consumer perhaps something different. My tour of the ECS headquarters back in June, and a Q&A session with an ECS VP, gave credence to ECS pushing more into the consumer market rather than their roots in OEM.  X79 was a focal point for this, and today we are seeing the fruits of that perseverance, in the X79R-AX (Black Extreme) motherboard. 

Overview

Overall, I have to say that this board performed well, after some initial teething problems.  What we have is a $310 X79 motherboard ($260 with mail-in rebate from ECS until 2/3) with dual Gigabit Ethernet, support for 12 SATA devices (and 12 SATA cables included), a USB 3.0 bracket, support for quad-SLI/CrossfireX as well as onboard WiFi and Bluetooth.  With the MIR this makes it a very attractive board, within firing line of the Gigabyte X79-UD3 reviewed previously. 

However, some users will note some areas which are perhaps comparably not as desirable compared to others – a Realtek ALC892 audio rather than the ALC898 commonly on X79, both gigabit Ethernet ports are also Realtek rather than Intel (or Broadcom), and only four DDR3 DIMM slots.  Personally, while these features are nice to be upgraded, from a personal perspective, they probably are not deal-breakers unless you specifically need the upgraded component.

In terms of auto-overclocking, this is one of the best ones we've seen, giving a 4.5 GHz CPU overclock, and applying an XMP profile, with just one option in the BIOS.  However, other overclocking methods are not as easy - I had difficulty using the auto-memory overclocks, and the CPU multiplier adjustment didn't seem to work, leaving only the CPU strap and BCLK to adjust.  Visually, I like the ECS style, with the black, grey and white, and everything is laid out on the board relatively easy to get to.  The board itself comes with a 3-year warranty for parts, 2-year for labor.

There were some initial hindrances in the X79R-AX review sample I received.  I was confused about some of the SATA ports labeled SAS, given that SAS compatibility was pulled from the Sandy Bridge-E specifications, but this was remedied by installing Intel RST in the OS.  On my shipping BIOS (11/10/2011), there were also issues relating to Turbo not being applied to the CPU.  This was fixed in the latest BIOS I was shipped (12/26/2011), which should be online shortly.  I have also fired a list off to ECS for some suggested changes to default settings to help consumers, but nevertheless, with the features on board, for the price (and the rebate), ECS have a very attractive offering.

Visual Inspection

As mentioned previously, I like the ECS color scheme of black, white and grey.  Anything that cannot be changed and is in the background is black, and everything else is grey/white.  For your money, the first thing users will see is that there are only four DDR3 DIMM slots, compared to some models in this price range having eight.  The pros and cons of having eight slots over four are debated wildly across the internet, and it comes down to need – if you want more than 16 GB (4x4 GB) of memory in your system (assuming you are not willing to spend $$$ on 8 GB modules).  For most enthusiasts (gaming, overclocking), the answer is probably no, whereas for media editing, rendering, VMs or simulation, you may need more.

Around the socket itself we have a tight squeeze with the DIMMs and the VRM cooler.  The VRM cooler is connected via heatpipes to the chipset cooler, and also sports ECS' new 'Qooltech IV' technology.  This is essentially a strip (or as ECS put it, 'thermal chromic technology') with chemicals that change color (black/transparent to orange) above a certain limit, akin to what you may have had put on your head as a child to check your temperature.  The downside I found is that my CPU cooling obscured this, making it quite irrelevant to the product.  Even with the extra temperature strip on the chipset heatsink, that was obscured mainly by my dual GPU setup.

In terms of fan headers, the board has five - two four-pin CPU headers at the top of the board (one either side of the VRM), a three-pin PWR fan to the left of the socket and two 3-pin (one SYS and one PWR) straddling the 24-pin ATX power connector.  This means no fan connectors at the bottom, which is a shame.  These fans are either controlled via the BIOS, or the eSF software provided by ECS will adjust the SYS fans via a hysteresis loop.  More on that later.

Moving down the right hand side of the board are the abundant SATA ports.  From top to bottom, we have two SATA 6 Gbps from the PCH in grey, four SATA 3 Gbps from the PCH in white, four SATA ports labeled 'SAS' from the PCH in grey, then another two SATA 6 Gbps in grey from an ASMedia controller labeled EXSATA.  Officially, these last six are not supported by the chipset, but are still in the silicon.  They have to be enabled in BIOS, then again in the OS by Intel RST - this can be frustrating slightly if you just plug in your hard-drive and expect to be able to install an OS straight away.  I suggest using the top six connectors until everything is installed, or keeping the bottom six ports purely for storage devices. 

The south side of the board is relatively empty compared to others, with only two USB 2.0 header, one USB 3.0 header, a COM header, front panel connectors and SPDIF output.  One thing which does annoy me slightly on ECS boards is the lack of printing on the PCB where the connectors for the front panel should go - this is commonplace on almost every other manufacturer, so users do not need to pull out the manual.  For a reviewer, the Power/Reset buttons are a help in this regard, but for users fiddling inside a case, this info should be there on the board itself.  Also of note down the bottom of the board is the Debug LED for diagnosing issues.

In terms of PCIe layout, Simple Makes It (a) Lot Easier with the ECS board, sporting four PCIe full length slots each separated by a gap, and thus in x16/x8/x16/x8 configuration (the second x16 becomes x8 when the fourth slot is populated).  In between these are a pair of PCIe x1 slots, meaning no PCI connectivity.

The IO panel is awash with USB ports, making up for the lack of headers on the board itself.  From left to right, a clear CMOS button, PS/2 connector, two USB 2.0 ports, then the WiFi dongle (antenna is attached to this dongle and comes with the board), two more USB 2.0 ports, an eSATA 6 Gbps port, a blue Bluetooth dongle, two more USB 2.0 ports, and an eSATA 6 Gbps port.  Onto the two Realtek Gigabit NICs, and the four blue USB 3.0 ports.  Finally we have the audio jacks and SPDIF digital output.

Gigabyte GA-X79-UD3 Motherboard Review

Gigabyte GA-X79-UD3

Intel’s new X79 Express Chipset has been out for a while and every enthusiast has probably already bought the latest motherboards for their new builds or are planning to in the near future. We have review a few of the high-end motherboards from Gigabyte, ASUS, and Intel. However, now its time for the lower-end motherboards that is more for the consumer level. It’s mainly for the computer geeks who want to get their hands on the new chipset but don’t want to go broke doing it. Gigabyte has solution for many consumers who want a budget friendly X79 motherboard with their Gigabyte X79-UD3 motherboard. It won’t have as many features for overclocking like the UD7 but it will definitely keep us with the X79 bandwagon.

 

For people that don’t know anything about the new chipset or what it has to offer, I’ll be going into full detail on what the chipset has to offer. Main improvements with this new chipset include Performance Overclocking, PCIe based Uplink to processor, Up to 8PCIe lanes from PCH, and up to 14 SATA connections (10 ports at 6 Gb/s and/or 8 ports supporting SATA and SAS). Intel has also included Quad Channel DDR3 memory and an overclock memory speed of up to 2666MHz. As I have mentioned before in previous reviews “Quad Channel” is really just 4 Dual Channels Memory sticks, so don’t’ get pulled into the marketing scheme.

 

Also, a new feature that comes with this new chipset is Intel’s Rapid Storage Technology. This is geared towards the increased allowable SATA ports so that your system can run in RAID 0/1/5/10. And with the addition of true SATA 6Gb/s ports, you can experience all the amazing speeds from your SSDs. The Marvell controllers on your X58 motherboards are capped and will definitely be a good bit slower than the speeds that will be seen with these SATA 6Gb/s ports. Now that we have taken a good look at the specs of these new features of the X79 chipset, let’s see what comes inside Gigabyte X79-UD3 motherboard.

Contents

• Gigabyte GA-X79-UD3 Motherboard
• Gigabyte Motherboard Driver Disk
• User’s Manual
• Quick Installation Guide
• Four SATA cables
• I/O Shield (Color Coded)
• 2 x SATA 6.0 Gb/s Cables
• 1 x 2-Way SLI Bridge Connector
• 1 x 3-Way SLI Bridge Connector
• 1 x 4-Way SLI Bridge Connector
• 1 x 2-Way CrossFireX Bridge Connector

Gigabyte G1 Assassin 2 X79 Motherboard Review

Gigabyte G1 Assassin 2 X79

Before we take a look at the features of this specific motherboard, let’s first have a look at this new chipset from Intel. This is the new X79 chipset that will be replacing their previous enthusiast level chipset, the X58.

This new chipset supports Intel’s latest 2011 socket processors and these will be replacing their venerable 1366 socket processors. These new processors feature a whole host of upgrades over the previous generation of Core processors and deliver nearly server level performance at the high end of the spectrum. For a full understanding of everything that these processors have to offer I suggest that you read the 2011 socket review that was written by our editor and chief, Elric Phares.

One of the first things that you’ll notice about the boards that support this new architecture is that they feature ram slots on either side of the processor socket. This is to facilitate support for quad channel memory and reduce the latency that would be caused by having all of the slots on one side of the socket. This new memory architecture is capable of speeds of up to 2400MHz with overclocking and support for up 64 gigs of memory. This is an amazing amount of memory that can now be installed on consumer level motherboards.

This new chipset also features Intel’s Platform Controller Hub technology. What this means is that instead of the traditional dual chip design that features a north bridge and a south bridge, this uses a single chip to handle communications between the processor and the various interfaces. This streamlines the way the processor interacts with these interfaces and has the potential for increasing the speed at which that these interfaces can be accessed. This chipset also has support for up to 40 PCI express 2.0 lanes and 8 lanes for PCI express 3.0. With the ability to use this new interface it guarantees that this motherboard will be ready for the graphics cards of the future. With the amount of lanes available it also will give motherboard vendors the maximum amount of expansion options for their boards.

Right from the start you can tell that this board is something special. It features very similar styling of their previous G1 boards and this board is meant to be in the top tier of those boards. Their Assassin x58 board was very popular and this Assassin board will surely be just as popular. It comes in at about 400 dollars and this puts it in the extreme-enthusiast range.

 

This board supports the latest options for storage expansion. All of the SATA ports on this board are full 3.0 compatible and this board also features 2 USB 3.0 ports on the back and support for two more on the motherboard. There are also four fan headers and a CPU fan header. Each of these can be controlled with their own thermal sensor from either EasyTune or the UEFI BIOS. These are great features to have in an enthusiast class motherboard.

 

Another feature of this board is that it supports up to three graphics cards for dual, triple and quad Crossfire X configurations and it will also support dual, triple and quad SLI configurations. What’s important to note though is that quad is only possible when using cards that feature dual GPUs. This board only has three PCI express lanes, but this should still give most enthusiasts plenty of expansion options. These slots also are spaced far enough apart to allow for the installation of three dual-slot cards.

Gigabyte have retained the G1 theme in this board with the upper MOSFET heat sink being made to look the barrel of a rifle and on the chipset there is a heat sink made to look like a pistol. If there was any doubt that this board was designed for gamers then this should remove it completely. There isn’t anything about this board that’s understated and it looks amazing. It also retains their all-black PCB with black and green connectors throughout the board. Black and green might not be the color scheme that some are looking for but I think it looks great.

 

Asus P9X79 Deluxe Motherboard Review

We have Asus’ new P9X79 Deluxe motherboard that we’re going to be reviewing but first let’s have a look at the new X79 Express Chipset from Intel. This is Intel’s latest enthusiast level chipset that will replace the venerable X58 chipset.

This new chipset adds quite a few new features and that are sure to make this new chipset a must-have for the enthusiast and hard-core gamer alike. First off this new chipset adds support for Intel’s latest socket of processors, the 2011 socket. We tested this particular board with their new flagship processor, the 3960x six core that runs at 3.3 Gigahertz and also has Hyperthreading. This new processor is manufactured on Intel’s 32nm process and features support for quad channel memory. These processors currently retail for about 1050 dollars and aren’t sold with any heat sink or fan from what we’ve seen from the online retailers. Our processor came with an all-in-one liquid cooling solution that is very similar to Corsair’s H50 water cooling unit.

 

One of the first things that stand out when you first see one of these new boards is that there are memory slots on either side of the processor.  This particular board has a full eight slots for memory expansion which allows for a total of 64 gigs of ram to be installed. Quad channel is meant to make it easier for the CPU to address memory for the applications that need it and this should also increase performance. Our benchmarks will show if this actually adds up to the performance that it’s meant to. There is a drawback to this design though. If you are using taller memory you may have a problem with some CPU heat sinks. With the lack of motherboard real estate there could be some clearance issues with taller memory sticks and some of the larger heat sinks. This new memory architecture is also supposed to support speeds up to 2400 MHz of DDR3 with overclocking.

Another feature that Intel has added to this new chipset is that it features their Express Platform Controller Hub technology. This isn’t all that new for Intel but it means that instead of having a traditional south bridge and north bridge configuration there is just a single chip that relays information from the motherboard’s peripherals to the processor. This has the potential of reducing heat generation and power consumption. It also frees up valuable real-estate for other features like debug LEDs and switches for power, system reset, and BIOS reset for example. From our testing we noticed that none of the heat sinks on the board became too hot to touch during our testing. So it would appear that this technology actually does reduce overall temperatures. This chipset also features support for 40 PCI e 2.0 lanes and 8 PCI e 3.0 lanes for graphical and expansion cards. PCI e 3.0 isn’t supported yet by any of the current graphics cards but will hopefully be implemented in the next generation of cards.

This motherboard comes with a whole host of amazing features that are going to help to set this board apart from the competition. Now that we’ve gone over the main features of the chipset let’s go over the specific features that this new motherboard from Asus brings to the table.

This board is very well laid out and has really nice looking heat sinks that cover the hottest areas of the board. There is also a heat pipe that helps to direct the heat away from the hottest areas in order to make the board last longer and run more stable. At the bottom of the board you’ll find a debug LED to help troubleshoot boot errors and there are also switches for power, reset and clear CMOS.

These boards support the new quad channel memory architecture for installing up to 64 gigs of DDR3 memory up to 2400MHz with overclocking. These slots will also support Intel’s XMP technology for automatic speed settings that will make installation as simple as possible. This new architecture simply allows the processor to address four channels of memory at once for improved performance. As I stated above, the only drawback to this might be installing larger processor heat sinks that give the necessary clearance for taller memory sticks. This is something to keep in mind when purchasing an aftermarket cooler for your 2011 socket processor.  

Asus has nicely laid out the PCI e slots on this board. If you are running one or two cards you’ll get the full x16 bandwidth. When running more than two cards you’ll get x16, x8, and x8. These are spaced in accordance with Asus dual spacing policy so that you can run three cards in a multi-graphics configuration. Asus has made this their policy because spacing has been a problem in the past and not everyone is going to water cool their graphics cards just so that they can use them in single slot spacing. This shows that Asus has been paying attention to what their customers want and this particular spacing will even give you the option to run triple slot cards in dual card configuration. You will need to make sure that your case supports at least 8 expansion slots for this to work.