Introduction

Introduction ECS X79R-AX Extreme

Over the past few years we have noticed that ECS, being an OEM manufacturer, has tried really hard the infiltrate the retail market as well. That happened with reasonable success. Where their design started to pick up was with the Black Series motherboards. A much better looking design with more features.

It's been three years already since that first Black Series motherboard was released and a lot has changed. With Intel's Sandy Bridge-E processor out in the wild and that the X79 needed to form bond into a mutual symbiosis, ECS also started designing a motherboard for that all new 6 core processor.

Admittedly, I was a little shocked when the motherboard arrived, as it is probably the most feature rich X79 motherboard we've had in our labs. Now I'm not saying it's the most enthusiast oriented X79 motherboard here as for that an ASUS Rampage IV Extreme would be more suited, no, feature rich. An incredible amount of detail went into the motherboard offering you the extremes to be found in heaps of SATA and USB 3.0 ports and so much more cool stuff like multiple NICs, wireless connectivity, Bluetooth... really, I was not joking when I said feature rich. And yeah, that's what ECS is good at, building a motherboard loaded with options versus a fair price.

Anyway, head on over to the next page where we'll discuss the X79 chipset and the respective ECS X79R-AX model. Then we'll throw a decent photo-shoot and a benchmark suite at the product and get an indication what performance is like with the Intel Core i7-3960X (Sandy Bridge-E) and X79 platform.

Have a peek and sure, we know it, you will either love or hate the design but give it a chance as the motherboard is just loaded with appealing features.