ECS Elitegroup X79R-AX (V1.0) Pro Reviews

If this ECS board was rock solid out of the package, I'd have to give it a Silver Award for the combination of features and price, without a doubt. Unfortunately, the BIOS still needs work on the OC, the software could do with an update, and some of the more premium onboard features were cut down (Audio, DIMMs, Ethernet controllers), presumably for market segmentation and to save on board cost. But stick in 16 GB, put it on the working auto-OC setting, a couple of GPUs and up to 12 SATA drives, connect to your home wireless, and I can imagine you would have a nice and happy system at your fingertips. For that, I'd have to at least give the board a recommendation, and at the rebate price, an Anandtech Bronze Award.

The ECS X79R-AX wasn't quite the joy to work with that I had hoped. Hopefully ECS can sort out the issues that we ran into in the near future and make the ECS X79R-AX the board it was meant to be.

ECS is working hard to improve the quality of its products, and this is clear by seeing the voltage regulator circuit of the X79R-AX, which uses a high-end design, on par with tier one manufacturers. ECS also hit the bull’s eye on the color selection and use of different colors on the PCI Express x16 slots in order to identify their speed. The company was able to add several additional features to the X79R-AX, to make a fully-loaded motherboard at a very competitive price: four PCI Express 3.0 x16 slots working at x16/x8/x16/x8 supporting SLI and CrossFireX, eight SATA-600 ports (four of them compatible with SAS-600 devices), two eSATA-600 ports, six USB 3.0 ports, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi IEEE 802.11b/g/n, and thermometer strips for the chipset and voltage regulator. The negative points for the X79R-AX are “the usual” for ECS products in general: poorly written manual, color code for the SATA ports uses the opposite scheme from all other manufacturers, SATA ports could use different colors depending to which controller they are connected, and the use of a mainstream audio codec with low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) for its analog input instead of a high-end one. Also, it only has four memory sockets, which may be a drawback for users thinking of adding more memory in the future. By the way, we had a hard time setting up this motherboard. With a USB keyboard installed, you simply can’t enter the motherboard setup; you will need a PS/2 keyboard. If these drawbacks don’t scare you, the ECS X79R-AX is a good option if you want all the extra features it brings.

We spent a couple of days with the ECS X79R-AX before beginning our review. The last ECS product we looked at didn't leave us very impressed, but the ECS X79R-AX was clearly cut from a different cloth. There were a few issues we encountered, but nothing that truly prevented us from getting the most out of the hardware we installed with the ECS X79R-AX. The accessory package is fantastic, with cabling for every drive plug, and speaking of drive plugs, the ECS X79R-AX is the only board that we are aware of that actually enabled the SAS-support that is inside all Intel X79 Express chipsets, but disabled in most instances. Combined with the ability to run four cards in either Crossfire or SLI mode, the ECS manages to pack in a fair bit of ability that nothing else in the same price range can lay claim to. The XMP v1.3 issue, and a lack of an extended Crossfire bridge did impact the final scoring a bit, as we had to see a high-end board miss out on optimal configurations without having to spend more money on something as simple as a Crossfire bridge, but because that particular issue isn't one that will affect all users, it's big, but still relatively minor, all things considered. That leaves us giving the ECS X79R-AX a big "Recommended" award. Good job, ECS! Don’t forget to hit us up in the forums to help you get your ECS X79R-AX running at the extreme edge of performance...the "Black Extreme"!

Sporting some pricey features but costing less than many competing X79 Express motherboards, the ECS X79R-AX Black Extreme offers just about everything except maximum memory support.

However, there were some things I did not admire in this board especially when it came to cooling and excluded connectors. There is almost no cooling on the northbridge for the mosfets and only one SLI connector even though the board supports SLI and CrossFire. It may seem picky but I think these are just standards for motherboards that shouldn’t be overlooked. Other than that though, this motherboard still performs extremely well against the X58 motherboards and quite well against other competitors sporting the X79 chipset as well. I do not recommend it for the enthusiasts who are really into computers. But, for those of you who want to try out X79 chipset for your next computer I think the ECS EliteGroup X79R-AX is a great a choice and affordable as well.