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

Overall the ECS board performed well. The 2011 socket is really there for an interesting select few among the community. If you have the budget to support it, it is most certainly something fun to monkey with; otherwise it's just another processor that is a little better than the last. The only real downfall for the ECS board was the USB 3.0 scores as it was beaten out by a large amount each time. This probably doesn't matter to most of you, as to be perfectly honest the USB 3.0 devices still haven't exactly taken over the market. Few devices really find profound amounts of improvement from USB 3.0; until they do, I don't mind too much. Support is in hand for both Quad CrossfireX and Quad-SLI - you can run about whatever you can imagine. The only downside here is the lack of full 16x speeds with multiple cards. At a full quad pace each slot is only electrically 8x so scores and gaming may be a little less impressive; though the more common two card setup can be completed with 16x speeds no problem. It does support SLI, which was an issue some earlier boards I've owned had that made them a little less worthwhile. The SATA setup on this board is phenomenal, though. It loses out on the USB 3.0 scores, but it has a lot of options here with ten SATA ports; four of them 6Gb/s and two with SAS capabilities. This is a great board for a RAID setup and the cost is quite fine as well. Overall, the ECS X79R-AX is a heck of a board that is well worth a buy if you've got a 2011 chip.