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Foxconn BloodRage Motherboard

The Foxconn BloodRage was one of the most anticipated X58 boards made. The board comes packed with innovative features seemingly poised for "extreme" overclocking. Whether these statements are hype, marketing fluff, or fact remains to be seen. Read on as we separate the fact from fiction.

Introduction

Foxconn is one of the largest manufacturers of computer hardware on the planet. It makes everything from motherboards to Molex connectors, and even those little covers that protect LGA775 sockets during shipping. Foxconn has also been the manufacturer for several motherboards sold under other brands and they've been doing this for a number of years. Somewhere around three or so years ago it started selling motherboards under its own brand name. Since then it’s grown into healthy competition for the other brand names, Foxconn has developed its own following. Just as ASUS has done with their Republic of Gamers branding, Foxconn has followed suit with their "Quantum" branding.

Boards in the Quantum series are supposed to be the "best of the best" products in Foxconn's product portfolio which is aimed at the computing enthusiast. It touts overclocking features and stability above all else. So far in our testing, every Foxconn board we’ve reviewed has been decent hardware, but nothing memorable and certainly nothing that set itself apart from the rest of the boards on the market.

The Foxconn BloodRage is Foxconn's premiere X58 chipset based offering. Using Intel's latest and greatest X58 chipset it is compatible only with Intel's Core i7 LGA1366 processors. It features a triple channel DDR3 memory interface and through overclocking supports memory speeds up to DDR3 1800MHz. The Foxconn BloodRage uses a 100% solid capacitor design along with ferrite chokes. The BloodRage also has a 14 phase power design which is a combination of analog PWMs and digital phase timing. Foxconn states on their web site that this allows for faster and more stable responses to power consumption. It also supports NVIDIA's SLI technology and ATI's CrossfireX technology. There are some caveats to using them, but I'll get to that later. SLI and CrossfireX support is provided natively by the X58 chipset so there is no nForce 200 MCP onboard the BloodRage's PCB. In my mind that's a good thing. Not only is it unnecessary, performance wise, but it adds heat load and uses more power. (Two things that aren't desirable given that there is little to no benefit from having the nForce 200 MCP onboard.) Also included with the board is a SONAR X-Fi card capable of supporting Creative's EAX 4.0 and CMSS®-3D support.

Main Specifications Overview:

Detailed Specifications Overview:

Packaging

The board is packaged in a very nice retail box. The packaging is nearly as nice as the ASUS Rampage II Extreme's and other premium boards. Normally this is the part where I talk about how the board is secure and the package is adequate to safeguard the goods until installation time. Well sadly, this time I can't do that this time.

Unfortunately, the way our sample was placed in the box lead to the SPDIF connector getting broken off of the PCB. It is difficult to explain how it happened but I'll just say a cardboard spacer could have protected the backplane from this. So this is something to watch out for. This is not an isolated incident. Many BloodRage boards have been unpacked with a broken SPDIF connector. This may or may not mean anything to you. Quite frankly, we couldn't care less that it is gone since the damage seems to have not impacted anything else. But given Foxconn cannot even package its high end motherboard correctly, it makes you wonder what else Foxconn missed.

The board comes with a fairly large bundle of included parts, accessories and feebies. Among the most interesting are three different chipset cooling options. A heat sink and fan for air cooling, a water block for water cooling and an open container designed for LN2 cooling from the looks of it. The BloodRage box doesn't actually spell out what it’s for and only refers to it as "Extreme Cooling." Open up the manual and you will see that it is spelled out that the "tube" is for Dry Ice or LN2 cooling options.

Inside the box you'll find an SLI bridge and among the more interesting included items are a bunch of little PWM heat sinks for cooling those should you be using something other than air cooling for your CPU cooling needs. Depending on your cooler, you might could slip those on top of the PWMs. Included are plenty of cables. You'll find 2 power cables bundled with 2 SATA data cables, 2 additional SATA cables of a different color, one USB/IEEE1394a I/O bracket, 1 EIDE/ATA-133 cable, 1 floppy cable, and one SAS cable. Why the board has two ports and only comes with one cable is beyond me. Manuals driver disk and of course an ATX I/O shield are also included.

Board Layout

First I want to say that the board is very sharp looking. It is easily among the best looking boards I've ever seen. The colors, the basic layout at a glance, and the cooling system make it very pleasing visually. With that said while the board layout is serviceable at best; there are several caveats layout-wise to working with this board and frankly, beyond a few minor complaints, there are some serious design flaws I don't like. First is the fact that there are only three DIMM slots. Second is that the x16 PCIe slot configuration is not ideal for 3-Way SLI configurations and though the board box and website shows that 3-Way SLI is supported, use of a standard 3-Way SLI bridge is not possible. The placement of the PCIe slots won't allow for it. So you'll have to ghetto-rig your own using three flexible standard SLI bridges in the right pattern and hope for the best. Again if it worked at all, I wouldn't be happy about the placement of the cards on the board. So this is a huge negative for a board that is supposed to be a high end part.

Like the ASUS P6T this board is disqualified from ever going into my gaming box based on this alone. Granted, it will work fine for Quad-SLI and CrossfireX, but it wouldn't exactly be ideal for a 3-Way SLI setup and who knows what will happen with video cards in the future? I run 3-Way SLI'ed Geforce GTX 280's in my machine today, but what about six months from now? A year from now? If you are like me, you try to plan ahead, and while this doesn't always work, I feel better about more flexible products. Another strong pet peeve of mine that I've found with this board is with the included audio solution. It uses a proprietary connection to the board. It isn't even like a normal expansion slot. It’s a card with a pinned plug on it. Even when screwed down it doesn't feel all that solid. It just seems like a cheesy way to build this. In any case if the audio hardware won't be included in the backplane, give me a normal PCIe x1 sound card and I'll be happy. That way I can use it or not and if I choose not to use it, I'll have a spare PCIe x1 slot for another sound card or whatever else I might need.

It is a long list of complaints. Well certainly more than usual. This is flat out the worst layout I've seen to date on any X58 chipset based board. The expansion slots are a mess, I don't care for the way the audio solution connects to the board and plug placement, while not horrid, could be better. I've never liked the floppy connector placed under the last card slot. This is something abit used to do and I never did like it. The headers for the USB and IEEE1394a ports are also badly placed. They are too far back for front panel connector cables to be used in many cases. I don't know whether to be mad at case manufacturers for the lack of foresight, or the motherboard manufacturers. On the subject of ports, I'm still a bit upset that they are using the non-locking right angled SATA ports for the ICH10R. Yet, the SAS ports are locking. The included cables are of the non-locking variety, so this beats out EVGA who used to include locking cables for non-locking ports, which many times break the ports connectors. Minor things to be sure, but it shows a lack of forethought.

The CPU area is free from obstruction allowing plenty of clearance for large cooling solutions like the Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme. However, the chipset's heatsink and fan for air cooling may interfere with some cooling solutions. There was barely clearance for the Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme I used with it during testing. Also in this area we can see the ferrite chokes and 14-phase hybrid PWMs. Essentially this is a mixture of a digital and analog PWM setup. According to the Foxconn literature, the analog PWMs have digital phase timing which improves efficiency and adjusts more rapidly to changes in power consumption. 14-phases sounds odd but the truth is, it is more than the number of phases which determines the quality of the boards electrical components. Sometimes quality wins out of quantity.

Unlike all the previous X58 boards I've looked at, the Foxconn BloodRage only has three DIMM slots. I've got to tell you, I'm not a fan of this. I'd prefer six. I think the idea behind this is that overclockers will probably use only three modules rather than six due to the idea that we don't expect four or six memory slots to work properly when overclocking. Yet, according to what we've seen from the X58 chipset and the Core i7, this need not be the case and you absolutely can run six DIMMS and 12GB of RAM at DDR3 1600MHz. Still, three DIMM slots isn't the end of the world, but I prefer a more flexible approach. To me that means more slots, not less. These slots are positioned well as they allow for removal or installation of additional modules with large video cards installed. They aren't too close to the CPU area either, which is sometimes the case on many boards out there. In front of the DIMM slots Foxconn has placed their "Force Reset" button. This is used to bring all hardware including the clock skews, processor, memory, voltages etc. back to stock settings allowing the machine to start back up in the event of a failed overclock. More or less, this does the same thing as clearing your CMOS. Though without the loss of settings.

The north bridge is located in the same place as it is on all other X58 chipset based boards. The north bridge itself is the same as all other X58 chipsets so there is nothing interesting about that. However, the cooling for the north bridge is where this board gets to be interesting and somewhat remarkable. Included are a heatsink and fan for air cooling, while not super quiet, the chipset fan wasn't actually too bad in terms of noise even while being used on my open air test bench. Also included is a waterblock and hose clamps for it. The water block is copper and sports a fire engine red paint job. All in all its really quite neat looking and very well built. While this worked very well in my testing, the board doesn't really need it. The reason I say that is that the X58 chipset runs far cooler than all Intel's recent chipsets do. Far cooler in fact. This is due to the fact that the processors now have the memory controller on board. The trade off is that the CPU seems to run a few degrees warmer than previous processors like the Core 2 Quad 45nm CPUs did.

Another issue is that the water block does not make direct contact with the chipset. There is a heat pipe cooling setup on the chipset, that has an upper modular assembly. Considering how this design works, I am not sure how well this really works compared to a direct attached waterblock. Also included is a tube that can be used with more extreme forms of cooling such as LN2. This option is included but I figure it won't be likely to see use much of the time. If you don't plan to use it, I can suggest other uses of it. Holding pens, or screws perhaps? It would work very well for that. All kidding aside it’s nice to see this type of included accessory, and innovation, even if it will largely go unused. Where those few really extreme overclockers and enthusiasts are concerned, Foxconn is at least thinking of you. Though as with the waterblock situation, you might be better ripping all the stock cooling off the board if you are going with LN2. I'm not sure how well a frozen heat pipe cooler will work on top of the chipset compared to a more direct contact method. Like everything else in this world, your mileage may vary.

The south bridge is located in front of the expansion slot area. Right in front of it sits the right angled SATA ports that are attached to the Intel ICH10R Matrix RAID capable controller. The south bridge itself is cooled by an extension of the same cooling system that cools the north bridge. This shouldn't be a problem as the south bridge usually runs fairly cool compared to the north bridge anyway. I don't foresee the heat load being a big consideration as I've seen it work fine with lesser cooling solutions in the past. Printed on the south bridge section of the cooling solution is the Foxconn Quantum Force logo.

Here we get to the part of the board I hate. Really, the expansion slot layout sucks. I'll just come out and say that. Why? Because it doesn't allow for 3-Way SLI or CrossfireX with the high end video cards which are always dual slot solutions. (At least in regard to air cooling.) This is fine if the board costs $150. This is not fine if it’s supposed to be a higher end enthusiast part. It is a design over sight that I couldn't live with. Even if you only use two video cards that are dual slot cooled, you run into the problem of blocking all but the PCie x1 slot which to my surprise is actually useful on this board. It isn't blocked by your chipset. But should you need anything that needs more than an x1 slot, while you are running a pair of GeForce GTX 295's, or 4870 X2's, you are essentially screwed. So for those of you with tons of cards in your machines, you can probably go ahead and skip this board entirely.

As I stated above at the beginning of this section, 3-Way SLI is right out. While the manufacturer claims it’s supported the standard six connector 3-Way SLI bridge PCB's can not in no way shape or form be used here. The board also doesn't come with one of those. (Obviously because it wouldn't work.) You should be able to use 3-Way SLI on this board if you take 3 flexible SLI bridges and crossing them in a card 1 to card 2, card 2 to 3 and card 3 to card 1 configuration. However you'd be on your own for finding these bridges as they typically come with the boards and since this one didn't, it is obvious that while they may have stuck the term 3-Way SLI on the box, they did so as an afterthought. Granted this may not be a big deal to you as you may not run 3-Way SLI now or ever, but it shows a clear lack of foresight on the engineers’ parts. It means that most likely, 3-Way SLI has never been tested on this board because if they had, they'd probably have changed the things before they went into production. The ASUS P6T Deluxe suffers from this same problem but they don't claim 3-Way SLI support so I'm fine with that. The Foxconn BloodRage does so I find it disturbing that their web page and box says it can given the obvious caveats to actually making it work. The claim is either a negligent one or the claim is misleading.

CrossfireX is a bit of a problem for the Foxconn BloodRage as well. With the 4870 X2's I've seen and owned in the past, each card came with a Crossfire bridge that was fairly short only allowing you to keep the cards one space apart. Meaning that a dual slot card would have to sit right next to another for the bridge to connect between them. Since I've run into this in the past with my own machine I have found longer Crossfire bridges on line that allow you more flexibility in regard to this. However you too would likely have to do the same unless your 4870 X2's or other ATI cards came with the longer flexible Crossfire bridges. Additionally CrossfireX with a 4870 X2 and dual 4870's is out. There is no room to use that many cards on this board without being able to cool the cards with some kind of single slot solution like a thin waterblock. Now you can use a 4850 in slot one, and a 4870 X2 in slot two. That would work fine. But that's about the only configuration I can think of that doesn't come packed with challenges. This is really bad engineering when you get down to it. Makes you wonder if Foxconn bothered to actually install more than one card in their initial test systems before finalizing the design. It’s harsh but I can't see why they'd build the board this way. It makes no sense.

Due to the way the motherboard was packaged in the box, the SPDIF connector broke off the PCB. As a result it does not appear on the backplane, but it should be present. On the I/O panel there are two RJ-45 ports, 8 USB 2.0 ports, a PS/2 keyboard port, one SPDIF port, two eSATA ports (attached to the JMicron JMB36x controller) and one clear CMOS button. Audio ports are provided via the included SONAR X-Fi Audio card.