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7 Intel Core i7 X58 Motherboards Tested and Compared

Motherboards/Intel S1366 by massman @ 2009-02-25

We put seven feature rich X58 motherboards for Intel´s latest Core i7 CPU to the test. Comparing performance, overclocking scaling in a multitude of applications and games. Which one comes out on top? Read on to find out!

Foxconn Bloodrage - Pictures

Foxconn is the trade name of the Taiwan based firm Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. Foxconn is one of the largest manufacturers of electronics and computer components worldwide, and mainly manufactures on contract to other companies. Although sometimes referred to as an original equipment manufacturer, Foxconn would be more accurately described as an original design manufacturer. Among other things, Foxconn produces the Mac mini, the iPod and the iPhone for Apple Computer; Intel-branded motherboards for Intel; various orders for American computer retailers Dell, Inc. and Hewlett Packard; the PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3 for Sony; the Wii for Nintendo; the Xbox 360 for Microsoft, cell phones for Motorola, and Amazon Kindle.

Previous reviews containing Foxconn motherboards:

790GX and SB750 explored and reviewed

Foxconn P35AP-S Motherboard Revisited: New BIOS

4-Way Intel P35 Motherboard Overclocking Roundup

BOX AND ACCESSOIRES

(Click for bigger version)

The Bloodrage motherboard is the successor of Foxconn's BlackOps motherboard, which was one of the first made-by-overclockers motherboards featuring the X48 chipset. As you might or might not know, the Quantum Force motherboard series is directed to overclockers and to satisfy the needs of the overclockers, Foxconn hired Peter Tan, better known as Shamino, and Sascha Krohn, known amongst overclockers as Saaya. Peter Tan recently left the Foxconn building, continuing his career as EVGA employee, but Sascha continues to help the Quantum Force engineers designing thé overclocking motherboards. Not only Sascha, but in fact a very large group of overclocking enthousiasts tests beta motherboards and checks for bugs and oddities, hence why there are a lot of bios updates available.

That this is an overclockers' board ... well, it's obvious. No other company has been delivering an extreme cooling unit for the northbridge, which is suitable for both dry ice and liquid nitrogen!

Underneath you find a list of what's in the box:

5 x SATA Data Cables

2 x Molex to sata

1 x SLI Bridge

1 x Fly-bracket with 2 USB2.0 and a mini-FireWire400 port

1 x Northbridge fan

1 x Northbridge watercooling block

1 x Northbridge Dry ice/LN2 container

1 x I/O Shield

1 x ATA cable

1 x Sonar X-Fi card

1 x Motherboard user's manual

1 x Specification summary

1 x Support CD

MOTHERBOARD

(Click for bigger version)

People who know me will agree with me: I love manufacturers who think outside the box. In the past, I've been spending hours and hours on a, for most users, outdated and with AGP equipped Asrock motherboard which featured both DDR1 and DDR2; I've been testing the MSI Memory-Lover because it features DDR2 and DDR3 ... when there's a novelty, I'm happy. And, frankly, I've been spoiled with this motherboard, because there are at least three different aspects of the motherboard that convince me of the geniality of the Quantum Force team.

First of all, please check the socket as you will find EIGHT mounting holes: one set for the LGA1366 coolers and one set for the LGA775 coolers! Instead of having to order a new mounting kit for your cooling units, which I have had to do myself for this review, you can just use your old mounting kit on this motherboard. The difficulty of adding four extra holes is close to zero, but that's what makes it so brilliant.

Next to that, there's the big red button near the 24-pin power supply, which is called the Force-reset button. As you may have guessed already, this button is one step further than a normal reset button as Foxconn promises that your system will always reboot when pressing this button, no matter what bios settings you've used. In fact, its function is quite simple: it's a light cmos clear and a reset in one: the bios settings regarding overclocking will be reset to normal values, whereas the other settings remain untouched (in the contrary to a normal cmos clear). Once again: brilliant!

The last aspect is the, obviously different, lack of three extra memory banks: only three are provided and thus a 6 x 2GB configuration is no option. However, it's not at all that stupid: after all, there are not that many people who invest in 12GB of memory as 6GB is already more than sufficient and in addition, it gives the Quantum Force team more room to tweak the memory overclockability. People have been reporting 50MHz better overclocking than the other motherboards, which is not insignificant. Our overclocking results can be found in the overclocking section of this review. Note that the three memory banks are place quite close to the memory socket, which may make it difficult for people to install a large cooling unit.

Underneath a list of the features of the motherboard:

8 x USB 2.0 ports

2 x eSATA ports

2 x RJ45 LAN ports

1 x PS/2 keyboard port

1 x S/PDIF Coaxial port

1 x 1394 port

4 x PCIe2.0 x16

1 x PCIe2.0 x1

1 x PCI

6 x SATAII connectors

3 x Onboard On/Off/CCMOS/Force Reset buttons

2 x 3-Pin Fan connectors

2 x USB 2.0 connectors support additional 4 ports

1 x IDE connector

1 x HDA header

1 x Front Panel header

1 x 1394 header

1 x ATX 24-Pin power connector

1 x 8-Pin ATX 12V power connector

1 x 4-Pin CPU Fan connector

1 x 3-Pin System Fan connector

1 x 3-Pin NB Fan connector

Comment from Kougar @ 2009/02/26

I think this thread was meant to be in the Articles section?

Good review, nice to see almost all of the major boards together in one thorough review.

I like how the OC tests were split up and the specific areas focused upon.

I know it would have lengthened the time with testing/overclocking but I would have much preferred to see 5-10 minutes of IntelBurn for stability testing... SuperPi 4M or even 32M only proves the system won't BSOD at desktop randomly. As overclocking is one of my top factors in deciding which board to chose to buy, this is important to me as a future X58 buyer.

Testing all the boards with the same processor in a single review (after plenty of BIOS revisions have already been released) means this review is one of the best comparisons for showing which board overclocks the best... but SuperPi 4M means nothing in terms of stability so I can't really draw definitive conclusions from the OC tests.

The only other thing I could ask was maybe throwing some UD3 or UD4 and either vanilla or deluxe P6T results in to show how they compare with the flagship boards in the OC tests. Just wishing, anyway...

Comment from geoffrey @ 2009/02/26

Huge!!!

Comment from Massman @ 2009/02/26

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kougar

I know it would have lengthened the time with testing/overclocking but I would have much preferred to see 5-10 minutes of IntelBurn for stability testing... SuperPi 4M or even 32M only proves the system won't BSOD at desktop randomly. As overclocking is one of my top factors in deciding which board to chose to buy, this is important to me as a future X58 buyer.

Testing all the boards with the same processor in a single review (after plenty of BIOS revisions have already been released) means this review is one of the best comparisons for showing which board overclocks the best... but SuperPi 4M means nothing in terms of stability so I can't really draw definitive conclusions from the OC tests.

I can't disagree: 4M is not really a good estimate for 24/7 overclocks, but for me it was the better choice in terms of stability testing and available time. Testing one motherboard's overclocking capabilities took me 1 full day, and that's only if everything went alright. Take into account the troubleshooting and you're off for a long journey :-).

The conclusions you draw are not supposed to be conlcusive in terms of absolute overclocking capabilities, but should be comparison ONLY. The overclocking process is being affected by more than just the motherboard (as you know): for instance, the memory overclocking results can be slightly better or worse depending on the quality of your memory chips. That's what the comments under the graphs are for, btw :-).

Next time, I'm going to change some things, though. I now already know that the maximum CPU-Z BCLK frequency will be replaced by maximum boot BCLK frequency. Actual stability tests are not an issue, as long as I have the time to do propper testing; with 7 motherboards on the testbed, that was kinda impossible. In stand-alone reviews, it shouldn't be a problem, though

Comment from Kougar @ 2009/02/27

Quote:

The conclusions you draw are not supposed to be conlcusive in terms of absolute overclocking capabilities, but should be comparison ONLY.

I just think having done this much, it would be worth doing that extra bit more to make it a comprehensive OC article. For all intents and purposes, I think I can safely say most X58 users will be overclockers.

Even 5 minutes of IntelBurn is not much longer than SuperPi 4M, and more simple to use than 4x1 instances of SuperPi. If time is that critical, perhaps you could set arbitrary CPU, VTT, QPI (etc) voltages/BCLK settings and just see what boards pass or fail at given settings? Just a thought, not sure if it was a good one.

Quote:

The overclocking process is being affected by more than just the motherboard (as you know): for instance, the memory overclocking results can be slightly better or worse depending on the quality of your memory chips.

Yes, of course. But for your review you used the same kit of memory. Just as everything else except the motherboard was kept identical. Which is why your overclocking results have the potential to be the most useful to readers than any other single-board review. Same CPU, memory, tests, OS, and same date that takes into account revised BIOS's. This review is as close to apples-to-apples OC comparisons as one can get.

Quote:

In stand-alone reviews, it shouldn't be a problem, though

That is partly my point. In a stand alone review often memory/CPUs and other hardware gets changed, more time elapses so BIOS's get updated and further refined, general OC knowledge for a new platform is improved, etc. All of those make it less of a direct comparison if doing ~ 7 individual reviews verses 1 large roundup. I know "ideal" is very often different from "practical", but still it would be "ideal" to have.

Comment from jmke @ 2009/03/01

those prefab voltage read out points are just awesome for the overclockers and testers out there, too cool

Comment from Massman @ 2009/03/01

Foxconn Bloodrage has them too.

There's quite an interesting story to tell about who 'invented' those pre-fab voltage read-outs, by the way

Comment from jmke @ 2009/03/01

where are they located on this board? Can't spot them in the pics at first sight

Comment from Massman @ 2009/03/01

Next to the DIMM sockets. In the article, they're not visible (at least, not if you don't know where they are). I only noticed them when I prepared the board for this OC session :-)

Comment from jmke @ 2009/03/01

pics!

Comment from Massman @ 2009/03/01

Comment from jmke @ 2009/03/01

thanks

added to article. Not as fancy as the Asus board it seems.

Comment from Massman @ 2009/03/01

No, but it does the job

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