The X79 platform is currently the flagship desktop product line and is a testament to any enthusiasts search for extreme performance from their PC. That said, most enthusiasts tend to overlook some companies in favor of others because of their status in the market. One such company is ECS, which isn’t really well-known for offering high-end components but that’s changing as ECS has been aggressively bolstering their line-up of products from motherboards to graphics cards, slowly introducing newer and better technologies and quality components in their products in hopes to shed their entry-level status in the market.
Today we have ECS’s solution in the high-end Sandy Bridge-E platform: the X79R-AX. Packing a whole array of features and connectivity, ECS hopes that this member of their Black Extremeâ„¢ series helps put the company in hot contention in the enthusiast market. Those not familiar with ECS might want to known that the company is one the long-running motherboard manufacturers in the business and offer a wide array of products, most of which aimed at the budget and entry-level segment of the market. This has made ECS a go-to company for budget-minded consumers. As mentioned earlier, they have recently resorted to aggressive marketing to help instill their presence and help increase awareness of their ever-improving quality and internal standards in creating products. Will the X79R-AX make ECS a contender in the SB-E space, let’s check it out and make this showy! [toggle title=”Specifications”]
| CPU | º Supports 2nd Gen Intel Core i7 processor family for the LGA 2011 Socket º DMI 5.0GT/s |
| CHIPSET | º Intel® X79 Express Chipset |
| MEMORY | º Quad-channel DDR3 memory architecture º 4 x 240-pin DDR3 DIMM socket support up to 64GB, per one DIMM support 16GB º DDR3 2500(OC)/2400(OC)/2133(OC)/1800/1600 Due to the operating system limitation, the actual memory size may be less than 4GB for the reservation for system usage under Windows® 32-bit OS. For Windows® 64-bit OS with 64-bit CPU, there is no such limitation |
| EXPANSION SLOT | º 4 x PCI Express x16 Gen3.0 slot (2 slots run at x8 bandwidth) º 2 x PCI Express x1 slots |
| STORAGE | º Support by Intel®X79 • 2 x Serial ATA 6.0Gb/s devices • 4 x Serial ATA 3.0Gb/s devices • 4 x Serial ATA 6.0Gb/s devices(SAS6G1_2, SAS6G3_4) * • RAID0, RAID1, RAID5, RAID 10 configuration º Support by ASMEDIA ASM1061 • 2 x Serial ATA 6.0Gb/s devices • 2 x eSATA 6.0 Gb/s ports º *User please be notice due to chipset limitation, the compatibility and stability of SATA port(SAS6G1_2/3_4) may differ by different devices. |
| AUDIO | º Realtek ALC892 8-Ch High Definition audio CODEC º Compliant with HD audio specification |
| LAN | º Dual RealTek RTL 8111E Gigabit Lan |
| REAR PANEL I/O | º 4 x USB 3.0 ports º 6 x USB 2.0 ports º 2 x eSATA 6.0Gb/s ports º 1 x PS/2 keyboard/mouse combo port º 2 x RJ45 LAN connectors º 1 x Audio port (1x Line in, 4x Line out, 1x Optical SPDIF Out) º 1 x Wireless LAN Dongle º 1 x Bluetooth Dongle º 1 x Clear_CMOS button |
| INTERNAL I/O CONNECTORS & HEADERS | º 1 x 24-pin ATX Power Supply connector º 1 x 8-pin ATX Power Supply Connector º 1 x 4-pin power connector for VGA card º 2 x 4-pin CPU_FAN connector º 1 x 3-pin SYS_FAN connector (with smart fan) º 2 x 3-pin PWR_FAN connector º 4 x Serial ATA 3Gb/s connectors(90 degree) º 8 x Serial ATA 6Gb/s connectors(90 degree) º 2 x USB 2.0 headers support additional 4 USB ports(Gray One support EZ Charger) º 1 x USB 3.0 header supports additional 2 USB 3.0 Ports º 1 x COM header º 1 x SPDIF out header º 1 x Front panel switch/LED header º 1 x Front panel audio header º 1 x Clear CMOS header º 1 x Buzzer º 6 x Voltage measure points º 1 x Power on button º 1 x Reset button º 1 x 7S-LED Display |
| SYSTEM BIOS | º AMI BIOS with 64Mb SPI Flash ROM º Supports Plug and Play, STR (S3) / STD (S4) , Hardware monitor, Multi Boot º Supports ACPI & DMI º Audio, LAN, can be disabled in BIOS º Support ECS M.I.B X Utility º Support EZ Charger º Support eBLU º Support eOC º Support eDLU º Support eSF |
| FORM FACTOR | º ATX Size, 305mm*244mm |
Straight off ECS’s website. [/toggle] ECS has put up a mini-site for the X79R-AX, it’s quite adorable really.
[tabs tab1=”Packaging” tab2=”Closer Look”] [tab] [one_half last=”no”][singlepic id=6655 w=260 h=180 float=center]The ECS X79R-AX is packaged in a blue-colored box and I gotta say right now, this is one hefty package. The thing is heavy. Off the front of the box we see a heavily stylized image of the Black Extreme logo with marketing bullets along the bottom.
[/one_half] [one_half last=”yes”][singlepic id=6656 w=260 h=180 float=center]Flipping the box over we see a nice collection of marketing highlights again. This time with descriptions. ECS is going all out with this one I tell ya.
Here’s another shot of the box where we can see the box handle. Typical of any high-end board. A carry handle. lol.
[/one_half] [one_half last=”yes”][singlepic id=6660 w=260 h=180 float=center]The front of the box has a flap that opens up to show us a glimpse of the board inside. Also behind this flap are numerous charts and graphs showcasing the performance of the X79R-AX, supposedly. We’ll see for ourselves later how it does.
[/one_half] [one_half last=”no”][singlepic id=6661 w=260 h=180 float=center]The box flap hides a cut-away that shows the board inside. The board itself is wrapped in an anti-static packaging which obscures the view of the whole thing. Some board vendors opt to do away with such measures but we appreciate the attention to safety here.
[/one_half] [one_half last=”yes”][singlepic id=6663 w=260 h=180 float=center]Inside the package is a whopping 12 SATA cables, the antenna for our built-in Wifi, some documenation, an installation disc, numerous port covers for unused ports, an SLI connector, the backplane, a front-panel USB3.0 tray.
[/one_half] [/tab] [tab] [one_half last=”no”][singlepic id=6664 w=260 h=180 float=center][/one_half] [one_half last=”yes”][singlepic id=6665 w=260 h=180 float=center][/one_half]Here is the board in all its naked glory. The ECS X79R-AX is a full ATX sized motherboard so consider that before popping it in your case. ECS’ Black series features a black PCB highlighted with white and grey slots as its primary color scheme though its newer products are changing that.
[one_half last=”no”][singlepic id=6667 w=260 h=180 float=center][/one_half]
[one_half last=”yes”][singlepic id=6669 w=260 h=180 float=center][/one_half]
The lower part of the board packs 4 PCI-e x16 slot with 2 PCI-e x1 slots. A large heatsink covers the chipset linked by a heatpipe to the VRM heatsink that crawls just beside one of the DIMM slot. The front panel header along with the USB3.0, 2x USB2.0 and Power and Reset switches can be found along the bottom edge. We prefer having the USB3.0 front panel header a wee bit closer to the front since that’s where we’ll be placing it.
[one_half last=”no”][singlepic id=6670 w=260 h=180 float=center][/one_half]
[one_half last=”yes”][singlepic id=6671 w=260 h=180 float=center][/one_half]
Moving around we spot the connectivity on this board and its just plenty: 4x USB3.0, 2x eSATA, 4x USB2.0, 2x GBLan and a handy PS2 port for legacy mice and keyboards and a OC’r staple, and finally a clear CMOS switch so whenever your OC screws up you can just press it to reset the board to default settings. The top of the board near the socket is host to a 14-phase VRM topped by a heatsink plastered with Qooltech thermoreactive ink. It changes color based on temperatures supposedly.
[one_half last=”no”][singlepic id=6672 w=260 h=180 float=center][/one_half]
[one_half last=”yes”][singlepic id=6673 w=260 h=180 float=center][/one_half]
And if it isn’t outright obvious, this board supports 12 SATA devices. Six from the Intel chipset itself, 2 of which are SATA6 the rest are SATA3. The remaining 6 SATA3 slots are powered off the unofficially supported SAS ports of the X79 chipset while the last pair are from an ASMedia controller.
Overall the board layout is good and well thought out.
[/tab] [/tabs]TEST SETUP and OVERCLOCKING
| Processor | Intel Sandy Bridge-E i7-3960X 3.3Ghz (Turbo up to 3.9Ghz) |
| Motherboards | ECS X79R-AX, Intel DX79SI, AsRock X79 Extreme3 |
| Cooling | Intel RTS2011LC ALC by Asetek, Corsair H80 |
| Power Supply | Silverstone Strider Plus ST65F-P 650W |
| Memory | Kingston HyperX Genesis Quad-Channel DDR3-1600 |
| Video Cards | Sapphire HD6850 PowerColor HD7770 PCS+ |
| Hard Drive | Kingston HyperX SSD 120GB, Western Digital VelociRaptor 1TB |
| Operating System | Windows 7 64-bit SP1 |
We would like to thank Kingston, Intel, and ECS for providing the hardware and equipment for this review.
Our test processor is Intel’s top model in the Sandy Bridge E line-up, the i7-3960X. This processor features an unlocked multiplier amongst its other features and is what makes this a very flexible processor. The ECS X79R-AX features a Quick OC feature as well as three overclocking profiles: Light, Medium and Heavy. These profiles basically make changes to the BCLK amongst other things to achieve an overclock but nothing spectacular so we proceed by overclocking manually. Sadly, this is where it gets tough. The ECS X79R-AX’s overclocking options is stubborn and the stock BIOS was certainly lacking a few options. A BIOS update gave us more options. Still, manually setting the voltages is a challenge all on its own. The settings will sometimes revert to automatic and lose any customizations we’ve set. We’ve basically had it with that and just went ahead and ussed the Quick OC option which fortunately gave us a stable 4.5Ghz overclock via Turbo Boost on all cores.
PERFORMANCE
[tabs tab1=”SiSoft SANDRA” tab2=”WPrime” tab3=”CineBench” tab4=”SuperPi” tab5=”Video Conversion”] [tab]We’ll start off with SiSoft’s SANDRA CPU Benchmarks which includes the Dhrystone and Whetstone tests. These tests basically all run within the CPU and cache so it is really a test to show how a processor performs.
First up the Dhrystone, which is a integer and string benchmark. Then the Whetstone benchmark, which measures floating point arithmetic performance.
[singlepic id=6677 w=540 h=600 float=center][singlepic id=6680 w=540 h=600 float=center]On stock speed, we can see the X79R-AX perform around the same level as the others. Overclocking it gives us a clearer picture of how the board performs, bumping up the speeds to 4.5Ghz we get a more considerable gap between the ASRock board. Intel does seem to like its own kind as we see the ECS board trail behind it in this test.
[/tab] [tab]wPrime is a multi-threaded benchmark aimed to gauge the raw computing power of a CPU.
[singlepic id=6681 w=540 h=600 float=center]In this benchmark, we see the stock performances are within such a close margin between each other but the OC results gave the ECS a victory by a close margin over the Intel board.
[/tab] [tab]Maxon offers a nice benchmark tool called Cinebench which really stresses your entire system to render a very complex scene. The output score is completely unique to Cinebench but allows us to have a rough idea of how the CPU works with 3D rendering tasks.
[singlepic id=6682 w=540 h=600 float=center]The results further shows that the X79 boards all perform neck to neck with each other.
[/tab] [tab]Now we move on towards test with SuperPI and wPrime. SuperPI is single-threaded so our results show the performance of a single core.
[singlepic id=6679 w=540 h=600 float=center]First, I apologize for the hard to read graphs. Now clearly all the small value tests don’t show us a clear idea of how the boards perform against each other but as the value increases, the stock crown goes to the X79R-AX.
[/tab] [tab]Video conversion is one major requirements of user which requires heavy processing power. We used Xilisoft and convert a 150MB 1080p clip into x264 format and average out the times we get in 3 runs.
[singlepic id=6678 w=540 h=600 float=center][/tab] [/tabs]CONCLUSION
The ECS X79R-AX has shown us it can hang with our other Intel X79 boards, performing within the same range as the others. Compared to Intel’s DX79SI, it was quite close and are negligible. Overclocking our 3960X gave us a better look at how this motherboard performed and it started to trail behind the DX79SI. Speaking of overclocking, this is one the board’s low points. Couple that with some quirks in the UEFI, working with the X79R-AX’s UEFI is, for a lack of a better word, difficult. [singlepic id=6676 w=600 h=200 float=center] Most of our issues came from the overclocking options itself, with the stock BIOS version having lots of issues. A BIOS update fixed that for us and gave us some new options but we still encountered issues most notable the inability to save custom voltage settings. Another issue with the stock BIOS was problems with nVidia cards showing up garbage onscreen. ECS however redeems itself with its one-touch automatic overcloking options which managed to bring us to a stable 4.5GHz. We felt we could’ve gone higher but our Corsair H80 and Intel’s RTS2011LC just couldn’t tame the temperatures to let us go further. A much more refined BIOS would’ve really helped the X79R-AX achieve a lot more. In a more positive light, ECS’s choice of including a rich assortment of connectivity to this motherboard really makes it stand-out. With twelve SATA ports, 2 eSATA ports, 2 Gigabit LAN ports, 6 USB3.0 and 10 USB2.0 ports in addition to built-in Wifi and Bluetooth, this is a really, really solid board with plenty of options for connectivity. We could’ve wished that ECS had went with 8 DIMM slots as well as a larger VRM heatsink. I was also disappointed with the Qooltech IV thermo-reactive styling on the VRM heatsink. The Qooltech strip remained red/orange all throughout usage and with large cooling solution, this will most likely be obscured and out of view. Value-wise, this board retails for around $300 and no word of local availability. The X79R-AX contends in its price range with plenty other X79 motherboards but the majority of which lack the rich connectivity that this board comes with out of the box. Personally, I would pair this board with a 3930K and use it in the office for everyday use. [singlepic id=6675 w=600 h=200 float=center] In closing, the X79R-AX is recommended for people going the X79 path with a 3820 or 3930K and have no intention of doing some major overclocks and aren’t too concerned about a 2-5% performance gap with other solutions. Hopefully ECS will put out a BIOS revision that will help unleash the X79R-AX maximum potential and make it a true Extreme motherboard.
