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Foxconn Quantum Force X58 BloodRage Motherboard Review
Author: Dennis Garcia
Published: Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Board Layout and Features
The first thing you will notice on the BloodRage is the amount of time spent on the various design elements and color combinations. Of course color is one of the primary things we look at in our board reviews and when a company is bold enough to create an enthusiast motherboard using the Ninjalane color pallet we will be there showing our support!
BloodRage comes with 4 16x PCIe slots that can be run the following configurations. 2x 16 lanes or 4x 8 lanes. Basically this means you can run 2 slots at the full 16x but once you install a 3rd or 4th card all of the slots convert to 8x PCIe lanes. As you may have guessed the red slots are primary and default to run at the full 16x.
There is a new card retention clip found on this board and is one you won’t have to break to use. In the past the release tab was located directly under the GPU cooler which made removing the card extremely difficult, our preferred resolution to this dilemma was to break the tab. The new clip provides access from the back of the video card, simply depress the clip and remove the card.
There is a new card retention clip found on this board and is one you won’t have to break to use. In the past the release tab was located directly under the GPU cooler which made removing the card extremely difficult, our preferred resolution to this dilemma was to break the tab. The new clip provides access from the back of the video card, simply depress the clip and remove the card.
Quantum Force motherboards are specially built for hardware enthusiasts and overclockers to provide extreme performance when needed. The CPU powersupply is a perfect example of this as it features a 14 phase hybrid PWM. Memory banks are enhanced with a 3 phase powersupply and for better stability the north bridge comes with a 2 phase power unit. These additional power phases may seem excessive and really only come into play during extreme power draw while the system is overclocked.
For those of us with a favorite 775 cooler you can use it on the BloodRage however given the 130W of heat the Core i7 can generate this option is best reserved for water and phase cooling only.
For those of us with a favorite 775 cooler you can use it on the BloodRage however given the 130W of heat the Core i7 can generate this option is best reserved for water and phase cooling only.
X58 and Core i7 supports up to 3 memory channels and while most motherboards have 2 memory banks available. On the Foxconn BloodRage you will only find 1, most overclockers know that to get the best performance you purchase high quality memory modules and only enough to fill up one memory bank
