Intels Sandy-Bridge-E release is getting closer and more and more manufacturers show of their X79 based motherboard, known as the X79R-AX.

The motherboard features the characteristic ECS look and it sport four DIMM slots that are placed around the LGA 2011 socket.

These work in a quad-channel mode and support DDR3 speeds of up to 2400MHz, depending on the number of DIMM sockets populated (2400MHz is only supported in dual-channel mode).
 
To the left of the memory sockets, ECS has placed four PCI Express x16 slots, which are driven by the 40 lane PCIe controller integrated inside Sandy Bridge-E processors.

Judging from the color coding of the PCI Express x16 slots, only two of these appear to work in x16 mode, while the other have only 8 PCIe lanes routed to them. The motherboard is, however, compatible with both SLI and CrossFireX 4-way GPU setups (The PCIe slots drop to x8 when all are populated).

Other expansion options include a pair of PCI-E x1 slots, eight SATA 6Gbps and four SATA 3Gbps ports and an on-board USB 3.0 pin header for routing two such ports to the chassis' front panel.
 
More USB 3.0 ports are available on the rear I/O panel, where ECS has also installed a Bluetooth radio transmitter, the board's 7.1 channel audio connectors and a Clear CMOS switch.

Two additional Power and reset switches are placed on the board's PCB near a BIOS debug display.

CPU power is delivered by what seems to be a 14-phase PWM, which is cooled by a low-profile heatsink..

Intel's Sandy Bridge-E processors are expected to debut in mid-November 2011 and the initial CPU lineup will include three chips, two featuring a six-core design and a quad-core model. The ECS X79R-AX is also expected to debut in Q4 2011 (via softpedia).