ECS X79R-AX Black Extreme

Enthusiasts shopping for motherboards generally have two options: go gentle or go for broke. There's seldom much middle ground between reasonable (and reasonably priced) and hard-core (and expensive) hardware, but with its X79R-AX Black Extreme motherboard, ECS has made a good attempt to bridge the gap. With a price ($319 list) that places it at the lower end of the spectrum but some features like those found in much pricier brands, this board stakes a claim to value that few other X79 Express boards currently can. Die-hards won't find everything they might crave, but there's a cohesive enough blend here to please almost everyone else.

This ATX motherboard itself certainly has a sophisticated and austere look. Only white and gray fixtures adorn the black PCB, with even the bare-metal heat sinks matte in appearance; this was a board that was definitely designed to be viewed through a desktop's windowed side panel. The design is, in key areas, functional as well: The two PCI Express (PCIe) 3.0 x16 slots are dark gray and the two PCIe x8 slots are much lighter, so you won't have any trouble properly configuring your multicard CrossFireX or SLI setups. (The remaining two slots are both of the PCIe x1 variety.) Other helpful features for devoted tweakers include power and reset buttons located right on the motherboard (in the lower-right corner), and an error code display to help you determine where problems occur during startup.

Located near those buttons and the display are the motherboard's most distinctive features: its 12 SATA ports. This is a lot more than we've seen on any other X79 Express motherboard to date, so if you have hyperactive internal storage needs, chances are you'll be sated by all the options you have here. Only four of these support the newer and faster 6Gbps SATA III standard (all the rest are 3Gbps SATA II), but that remains an impressive complement for any motherboard.

Slightly less generous is the memory area. The X79 Express chipset provides for quad-channel memory, and the X79R-AX Black Extreme lives up to that?but with only four bays surrounding the LGA2011 socket, rather than the eight you'll find on the Intel Desktop Board DX79SI (which costs slightly less) or the Asus P9X79 Deluxe (which costs quite a bit more). The motherboard's 32GB maximum will still be more than enough for most people?and performance hounds will love that it supports memory overclocking up to 2,500MHz?but know that you won't be getting the maximum support possible.

The X79R-AX Black Extreme is otherwise well stocked. Two USB 2.0 headers and one USB 3.0 headers give you some expanded front- and rear-panel expandability (and an included bracket, designed for use in either an expansion slot or a 3.5-inch drive bay, makes the USB 3.0 easy to set up). Then there's the activity on the rear panel: one PS/2 port for hooking up a legacy keyboard or mouse, six USB 2.0 ports, four more USB 3.0 ports, dual Gigabit Ethernet jacks, and S/PDIF and eight-channel audio outputs, all joining a "Clear CMOS" button for returning to default settings regardless of what changes you make and integrated Bluetooth and Wi-Fi adapters for some additional freedom as far as networking connectivity.

The design of the board itself is fairly standard, with just a couple of outside-the-mainstream elements to it. The first is the location of the eight-pin 12V auxiliary power connector: It's tucked away on the inner edge of the leftmost memory bays, in a spot that might be more cumbersome to access than the traditional location in the far upper-left corner. If you want to enable electrostatic protection for your motherboard, you need to plug a four-pin Molex power cable into a jack anchored near the topmost PCIe x16 slot?again, not the most convenient place.

A number of other convenience features can be found on the X79R-AX Black Extreme as well. An excellent graphical UEFI improves and simplifies the process of changing all of your system's crucial settings. Built-in M.I.B. X profiles save the most useful settings for low-risk overclocking. QoolTech IV, present on the motherboard's two largest heat sinks, tell you at a glance whether your system is operating within safe temperatures. And USB ports with EZ Charger offer three times as much current than typical ones when the computer is off, making it easier to power up your devices any time you want.

Performance generally varies little between motherboards using the same chipset, but on our basic benchmark tests the X79R-AX Black Extreme came out on the lower half of the spectrum, winning or tying in just eight of our performance tests. One area in which the ECS model did excel was power usage. Our full-system power draw using the ECS motherboard (and, for the record, a power-hungry AMD Radeon HD 6990 video card) was the lowest among the X79 Express competition during idle: just 96.9 watts (in second place was Intel's DX79SI with 99.2). The ECS board's full-load power usage took more of a jump, to 222.9 watts, whereas the Intel board maxed out at 211.6, but these are still respectable numbers well in keeping with the X79R-AX Black Extreme's lower-high-end pedigree.

The ECS X79R-AX Black Extreme earns our admiration for everything it gives you at its relatively low price?only a larger number of memory bays are conspicuously missing. Because the Asus P9X79 Deluxe gives you even more, in addition to those bays, it remains our Editors' Choice. But if you're looking for an X79 Express motherboard with tons of options that will run you closer to $300 than $400, it would be hard to go wrong with this ECS model.

More Chipset and Processor Reviews:
??? Intel Desktop Board DX79SI
??? ECS X79R-AX Black Extreme
??? Gigabyte X79-UD7
??? Asus P9X79 Deluxe
??? Intel Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition
?? more

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