Introduction

Foxconn has moved aggressively forward in the retail market, previously only OEM supplier they are now pushing hard to get their brand recognized by end users. Their latest motherboard is based on Intel high end X58 chipset. Their naming schemes are not a mumbo jumbo of numbers and letters, but actually really eye-catching, like their P35 MARS, X48 Blackops, and now the X58 Blood Rage.

How does this Foxconn high end board perform when tweaked and overclocked, time to take a closer look. Let us start with a shot of the fancy Quantum Force packaging:



Inside you’ll find the usual suspects: manual, installation guide and other documentation:



Accessories include SATA cables (straight and L-hook), I/O shield, additional north bridge fan.



Foxconn Blood Rage comes bundled with a separate sound card “Sonar X-Fi”. You also get two alternative cooling solutions for the north bridge, a water block and container for Liquid Nitrogen!

The board close up

Foxconn used a black PCB and combined with RED for PCIe slots, ram slots and also the covers of the Northbridge cooling. Overall a very nice looking result:





At the lower left of the board we find:

4 x PCIe x16 slots (supports 2 x 16X or 4 x 8X, also supports both ATI Crossfire and Nvidia SLI or PhyX card)

1 x PCIe X1 slot

1 x PCI slot



The lower right part of the board :

6 x SATAII (ICH10R, supports RAID 0/1/5/10)

4 x SATAII ( JmicronR322, supportsRAID 0/1/JBOD)
1 x IDE

Dual BIOS, on board power & reset button and Debug LED...



The upper right part:

3 dimms which supports 133/1600/1800, the maximums capacity can be up to 12GB

At the left hand side is the 24pin power input.



The upper left part:

Although this is now a LGA1366 socket here, they did include LGA 775 mounting holes here for users to keep their 775 heat sink!

The board provided total 14 phases Hybrid PWM for CPU’s power supplying. The special thing is they put them together when it is operating.



IO rear panel part:

8 x USB2.0 ports

1 x IEEE1392a

2 x Gigabit LAN ports, which supports Teaming Function as well

2 x eSATA

The black button is the clear CMOS function button



That Red button, they called “Force Reset” button. What you have to do is press the button and the system will shut down and reboot itself. And it seems some friendly design between power button 4secs reset and clear CMOS function.



The board features 3phases PWM for dimms part. I think it might improve the stability while the system is overclocked.

Motherboard Cooling

Foxconn includes three different cooling options for the northbridge, four if you count the passive/active solution with the stock air cooled heatsink; this must be the most complete accessories set seen on a retail motherboard!

The one seen below is the stock heatsink, quite a bit of thermal paste is used on the copper bottom:



The water block is made from copper also, with a nicely finished base:




The most extreme option is this aluminium tube for LN2 cooling:



Let’s boot the system ->

Test Setup Used

Windwithme Test Setup
CPU	Intel Core i7 965 Extreme
Cooling	Thermaltake V1 AX/JETART Nano Diamond/Lubic
Mainboard	FOXCONN Quantum Force Blood RAGE
Memory	CORSAIR Dominator 2GBX3 DDR3 1866C9D
Other	MSI R4870X2-T2D2G-OC Corsair HX1000W Modular Power Supply SAMSUNG 250GB

The first screen you’re met with is:



BIOS Explored

BIOS main option screen


The voltage and ratio settings are within Quantum BIOS section




DDR3 timing setting pages, XMP(Extreme memory profile) are here.


Voltage settings:

CPU Core Voltage +10~1260mV(CPU maximum 2.52875V)

CPU VTT Voltage +10~1260mV

DRAM Voltage 1.50~2.86V(after1.60V, the interval is 0.01V)

CPU Vdroop Compensation. That is a function for CPU to maintain a stability environment when CPU is in a heavy voltage loading status.


Every steps of the DDR3 parts can be fine tuned, like the X58:IOH core Voltage. 1.10 ~ 2.36V(interval is only 0.02V)


Up to 8 different OC profiles can be stored in the BIOS for quick retrieval

Included Software Tools

A software monitor for OC and various hardware statuses monitoring…you can manage the voltage that you desire. That the OC panel deck is an optional item.

You can voltage, FSB, memory settings real-time!



The BIOS bootup logo can be customized too with this tool call “Fox Logo”; the original one is this:



New logo has to be 640x480 JPG or BMP



DDR3 Memory OC

Corsair Dominator 2GBX3 DDR3 1866 C9D
Match with X58 it can be DDR3 1866 CL9 9-9-24 1.65V


The new generation Corsair AirFlow is intended to be designed for 3-channels DDR3, and also it’s best for maximum 6-dimms with a best heat dissipation.
It looks like a high-end level quality design.


DDR3 1862 CL9 9-9-241T, BIOS 1.6V


DDR3 1871 CL8 8-8-24 1T, BIOS 1.65V.


DDR3 2000 CL9 9-9-24 1T, BIOS 1.65V


DDR3 2074 CL9 9-9-24 1T,BIOS 1.65V
Sandra Memory Bandwidth-35575MB/s


DDR3 2102 CL9 9-9-24 1T,BIOS 1.65V


Getting a high overclock with 3 DIMMs does mean you must have three fine sticks; dual channel required two equally fine memory sticks, this time around, to get the best performance, you’ll need three DIMMs. Memory manufacturers like OCZ, Corsair, Kingston, and others are offering new Core i7 ready kits.

CPU & FSB Overclocking

CPU:
Intel Core i7 965 Extreme

CPU 133.7 X 29=>3876Mhz
DRAM DDR3 1871 CL8 8-8-24 1T

CrystalMark 2004R3


CINEBENCH R10


3DMARK VANTAGE


CPU FSB 206.2Mhz/DDR3 2062 CL9 9-9-24 1T


Now I changed the Intel Core i7 920 for the test:

218Mhz Super PI 1M/CPUMARK99


After my initial test, Blood Rage’s FSB record is apparently not bad. No matter i7 965Extreme or 920 are all can reach FSB to 206 to 218MHz. I have updated to the G15 version (12/30) BIOS and it did increase OC potential a bit, I hope follow-up version BIOS can be kept the same standard.

Conclusive Thoughts

Advantages
+ The Packing/ bundling and mother design is among the best in the business
+ Various BIOS option, wide range of voltage adjustment, OC ability is really not bad.
+ Supports both ATI CrossFireX and NVIDIA 3-way SLI. Full “coverage”
+ Total 14 phases hybrid PWM, an extraordinary design for PWM.
+ The board has 100% Japanese solid-state capacitor.
+ X-Fi audio card.
+ 3 extra PWM to support the DRAM power supplying. 4 ways cooler for NB
+ Good connectivity: 6 x SATAII, 2 x eSATA, IEEE1394 ports
+ Dual BIOS and on board Power/ Reset/ CMOS Reset button.

Disadvantages
- “market availability” is not that well in Channels around the world.
- Not a very interesting product for mainstream users, too hardcore.
- The XMP only supports DDR3 1600(highest). It would be perfect If it can supported DDR3 1866.
- The additional fan for NB is not easy to install.

The price of FOXCONN Quantum Force Blood Rage is around USD$300 which is about the same as other high end X58 motherboard. Entry level X58 motherboards do start at USD$220-240, if Foxconn could reduce pricing of this Quantum Force product to this level they’ll definitely get a larger market share for sure.

Foxconn’s Quantum Force line was launched about a year ago and all boards we’ve seen so far have upheld a high standard with excellent overclocking features and a multitude of extra’s included. We hope they keep this trend in 2009 with more affordable boards, based on the upcoming P55 Intel chipset .