ECS X79R-AX (Black Extreme) Review
by Ian Cutress on January 13, 2012 12:30 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- ECS
- X79
In The Box
The box bundle, while substantial, has positive points and negative points. What we have in the box is 12 SATA cables (two with right angled heads), a USB 3.0 front or rear panel with room for an SSD, a long flexible SLI connector, and the usual internals such as IO panel, driver CD and manuals. Two things to note - other competitors usually include more SLI connectors, and the USB 3.0 front panel cable isn't that long, such that in dual GPU mode it would only be suitable for the bottom of the front of the case, or as a rear USB 3.0 panel.
Image courtesy of Newegg
Board Features
| ECS X79R-AX (Black Extreme) | |
| Size | ATX |
| CPU Interface | LGA2011 |
| CPU Support | Intel Second Generation Core i7 Sandy Bridge E |
| Chipset | Intel X79 |
| Base Clock Frequency | 99.8 MHz |
| Core Voltage | Default, -300 mV to +700 mV |
| CPU Clock Multiplier | Auto, 12x to 1000x |
| DRAM Voltage | Auto, -300 mV to +500 mV |
| DRAM Command Rate | Auto, 1N to 3N |
| Memory Slots |
Four DDR3 DIMM slots supporting up to 32 GB Up to Quad Channel Support for DDR3, 1067-2400 MHz |
| Expansion Slots |
2 x PCIe Gen 3 x16 2 x PCIe Gen 3 x8 2 x PCIe x1 |
| Onboard SATA/RAID |
2 x SATA 6 Gbps, Support for RAID 0, 1, 5, 10 4 x SATA 3 Gbps, Support for RAID 0, 1, 5, 10 4 x SATA 6 Gbps (labelled SAS), support for RAID 0, 1, 5, 10 |
| Onboard |
4 x SATA 3 Gbps (PCH) 8 x SATA 6 Gbps (2 PCH, 4 'SAS', 2 Controller) 5 x Fan Headers 1 x 4-pin Molex CFX/SLI Power Connector 1 x SPDIF Out Header 1 x Front Panel Header 1 x Front Panel Audio Header 2 x USB 2.0 Headers 1 x USB 3.0 Header 1 x COM Header 1 x Clear CMOS header Power/Reset Buttons + Debug LED |
| Onboard LAN | Dual RealTek RTL 8111E Gigabit Lan |
| Onboard Audio | Realtek ALC892 |
| Power Connectors |
1 x 24-pin ATX connector 1 x 8-pin 12V connector 1 x 4-pin Molex CFX/SLI Power Connector |
| Fan Headers |
2 x CPU Fan Header (4-pin) 1 x SYS Headers (3-pin) 2 x PWR Headers (3-pin) |
| IO Panel |
1 x PS/2 Mouse and Keyboard Port 1 x Wireless LAN 1 x Bluetooth 6 x USB 2.0 4 x USB 3.0 2 x eSATA 6 Gbps 2 x Gigabit Ethernet Audio Jacks |
| BIOS Version | 26/12/2012 |
| Warranty Period | 3 Years |
Again, the ECS has a few positive and negative points with the board features as well. While we have dual gigabit Ethernet, some users may not enjoy they fact that they are Realtek, rather than the Intel NICs we see on almost all the major competitor boards. One other point of contention is that there are only four DIMM slots for one per channel, rather than eight DIMM slots for two per channel, or that the board uses the Realtek ALC892 rather than the ALC898 that all the other boards at this price range use. But I really like the fact that for this price, we can get an X79 board with onboard WiFi, Bluetooth, dual NICs, and twelve SATA ports and still enough space for dual/quad GPUs. It's a combination you will not see on many other products.
Software
Ever since I started reviewing ECS boards, such as P67 and Fusion, there has not been much change in the software available, thus I won't go into detail on many of the specifics, but the package includes at least one gem in their fan controls.
eSF (SF for Smart FAN) controls the SYS headers on the board, allowing for hysteresis in the fan settings. This is a feature we don't see on other boards (ASUS controls are pretty good in comparison for multi-point curves, but don't do hysteresis), and it definitely worked for ECS when I tested it.
Other software onboard is eOC (OC for OverClock), which gives user control of the BCLK and the voltages. This is still software used for older chipsets, as we don't have access to changing the CPU multiplier, or that modern CPUs go into various power states and voltages depending on load, meaning that the CPU voltage selections in eOC can fluctuate wildly. I wouldn't touch the voltages with this tool if I were an end user, in case I accidentally set 1.4 V in an idle state and it then added another +300 mV for a loaded state.
The two other parts of the package are eBLU, a BIOS Live Update tool, and eDLU, a tool which links to the webpage with all the latest drivers.
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theangryintern - Monday, January 16, 2012 - link
I fell victim to their low prices a few times, and every time it was a complete crap product. I've had a few friends that have had nothing but trouble with their products as well. Definitely one company I will stay way away from and I never recommend their products to anyone I know.darwiniandude - Sunday, January 15, 2012 - link
I built an 'el cheapo box in late 2001 based around an ECS K7S5A motherboard, SiS chipset, AMD cpu, it was the cheapest of the cheap at the time. Was mostly used as an office machine, but it's never had any hardware replaced until I replaced it with something good a few months ago. Was mostly on 24/7.Obviously, I'm sure this the exception rather than the rule, but I was still pretty impressed.
LoneWolf15 - Sunday, January 15, 2012 - link
The K7S5A wasn't a bad board --provided you got a good one. The design was fair --the quality control, like many other ECS products, was all over the map.I'm sure ECS can design an okay board, should they choose to do so. However, one segment of their production is cut-rate low-cost boards (which does nothing to inspire confidence) and if you combine that with inconsistent quality control, I don't trust their top-end stuff based on the other things they make.
MSI, Gigabyte, and others have much higher consistency in quality control even in their value $70-100 mainboards.
JediJeb - Sunday, January 15, 2012 - link
I am currently using one of the ECS L7S7A2 motherboard, matter of fact posting from it right now. It isn't and extreme overclocker but I have been running my AthlonXP2400M overclocked from 1.8ghz to 2.3ghz for the last 6 years or so 24/7. Before that I was using an ECS K7S5A which ran for several years overclocked until it was hit by lightening and popped one of the MOSFETs. I guess I have been one of the lucky ones to get two good boards in a row.DanNeely - Monday, January 16, 2012 - link
What a lot of people nursing grudges from a decade+ back fail to acknowledge is that when the number of board makers consolidated heavily in the early part of the last decade that the surviving companies with bad engineering reps were able to gobble entire design teams from companies that produced quality products but didn't have enough volume to sustain themselves in the market with the result that even the budget brands now have decent hardware quality.Nfarce - Monday, January 16, 2012 - link
Glad I'm not the only one who thinks ECS is crap. Made the mistake of buying one at Fry's several years ago for a buddy's E8400 build. Worst mobo I've ever bought since my first build during the Pentium II days. ECS has always been the cheap mobo, and the very idea of them coming off with a $300+ X79 is laughable. Fool me once, shame on me...popej - Friday, January 13, 2012 - link
This could work at office PC, but i doubt if enthusiasts would buy motherboard with no expansion capability.MrTeal - Friday, January 13, 2012 - link
Maybe not, but even for most enthusiasts 16GB shows little or no benefit over 8GB. By the time the you start wanting 32GB you'll probably be wanting Haswell-E or 32GB of DDR4 anyway.Nihility - Friday, January 13, 2012 - link
I disagree.My PC almost always uses 7.5 GB out of the available 8 GB. And I have to constantly close programs to make sure my system doesn't begin swapping.
Maybe 12 is enough, but 8 is not enough.
cjl - Friday, January 13, 2012 - link
What on earth are you doing where that much memory is in constant use? Either you have an enormous memory leak in several programs, or you are a very atypical user.That having been said, I would say that a SNB-E system should be built with at least 16GB (4x4GB), since 4GB RAM sticks aren't that expensive these days. A case could even be made for 32GB (4x8GB), since even 8GB sticks aren't that bad, and SNB-E is likely to be used primarily by pretty heavy users anyways.