Foxconn Quantum Force 'Blood Rage' X58 Sneak Preview

[Sampsa]

keyword currently, later we WILL use more

There are going to be good workstation boards available if you need massive amount of memory. 3 DIMM slots are just fine on overclocking boards like Blood Rage. I hope they would actually get rid of some other features which are not needed for overclocking.

[Slovnaft]

Why would "only 3" DIMM slots make any difference for a regular board user?
How many people in the world do you actually think will run more than 6Gb RAM?

I was simply pointing out that the fact that it does only have 3 slots indicates (along with the QF label *duh*) that it's designed primarily for benchers, so a digital pwm circuit that could provide reliable power at ~2v would be a logical feature.
And seriously, i think they should.

[Hoboclese]

i agree. but that doesn't mean that this board is only useful to benchers

[Revv23]

I'd have to get my boards out to have a look. But if I remember correctly the DFI 965 was 4 phase analog and the 975 6 phase analog.

Your right - I was refferring to the DFI board based off the nvidia chipset around that same time frame.

There are going to be good workstation boards available if you need massive amount of memory. 3 DIMM slots are just fine on overclocking boards like Blood Rage. I hope they would actually get rid of some other features which are not needed for overclocking.

I totally agree

3 slots is only one less than four guys...which is what we are used too.

I mean you can rock anywhere from 3-12gb I don't think thats so bad for an enthusiast board. Assuming eventual availability of mainstream 4gb ddr3.

[L1m1t.NL]

Foxconn Quantum Force "Blood Rage" Final Look




We told you last week about all the good stuff that this board possess and here are some photos on the final design of the board. There are some changes to the thermal solution of the board and it is looking better than ever.

New pictures of what seems to be the final design... heatpipe is now aluminum-colored. Bloodrage lettering has been added too.
There is also something new (with the ''Quantum Force'' lettering) at the bottom-right in the first picture, but I have no clue what it could be.
Anyone have a clue?

I like it alot!

[Slovnaft]

YAAAAY DIGiTAL!

wait...did i just count 13 phase pwm....?

[Linchpin]

How exactly are you supposed to run Tri-SLI on this board with dual slot cards?

[Revv23]

There is also something new (with the ''Quantum Force'' lettering) at the bottom-right in the first picture, but I have no clue what it could be.
Anyone have a clue?

That's 3-phase digital VRM for the ram! Holy crap man!

Edit - i wonder how people are going to insulate these X58 boards.... I havent seen one with a clean socket yet...

[Slovnaft]

That's 3-phase digital VRM for the ram! Holy crap man!

Edit - i wonder how people are going to insulate these X58 boards.... I havent seen one with a clean socket yet...

werd! this is actually the first that looks reasonable, that single cap near the socket could be worked around with kneaded rubber.
but gigabyte's offering? whew that's an insulation nightmare!

[TAX]

this is the best looking board ever. even better then my maximus II formula!

[eternal_fantasy]

YAAAAY DIGiTAL!

wait...did i just count 13 phase pwm....?

If you count again I think you'll find it's actually 14

[saaya]

14 phase digital?
I might just have to buy 2 X58 boards...

the pwm is analog but clocked higher, almost as high as digital the way i understood it this type of pwm has only been used in servers so far where it works very well

Is that Waterblock anodized aluminum? If so Foxconn can shove it.

nope, its copper or a copper/bronze mix, not sure about the final design yet.
but its big and beefy, no whimpy waterblock with tiny fittings

Damn the mobo manufacturers are trying to kill me. This one looks so damn sexy! Why only 3 RAM slots though?

glad you like the design
well why more than 3 slots? we had to decide between improving the layout for better memory overclocking or having the full 6 slots... the decision was easy to make...

there are few people who use 4 slots nowadays, and with 4gb ddr3 sticks just around the corner, whats the point of 6 slots really? people who want that much memory usually dont overclock at all or only a bit... in that case the DigitalLife Renessance with 6 slots or other 6 slot boards will be fine for them. This board is for overclocking, benching and gaming, its not a workstation board

IMO that's the best looking board to date for the X58 platform. I'm digging the black pcb with black on red everywhere else.

thanks

Looking closely it looks like digital? and our good friend saaya was promising digital pwm.

huh? you mustve misunderstood me... avenger (p45) has the same 8 phase digital pwm as the blackops...

damn only 3 dimm slots.

why do you want 6?

Also pci-e slot placing isn't the best...

thats true, for tripple sli the placement sucks... but there will be dualgpu cards from nvidia soon afaik, so....

extreme benchers also dont use esata/spdif out/firewire

yeah, esata and firewire are only there cause they are from the same chip that provides IDE... and killing IDE would have upset some people... so if we use the chip to get IDE we might as well offer firewire and esata

Best Colourscheme on any mainboard yet.

TY

3 Ram slots? sure, with 6 oc'ing will be worse than with 3, but is that really reason enough to remove the option to go for 12 GB?

for overclocking the layout is better with only 3 slots

Ide and floppy need to go, it might just be coincidence that you get the word Die if you rearange the letters in Ide, but that ancient stuff is pointless these days.

yeah... hard to convinve the guys here about that...

OMG, I love it... Too hot
P.S. Is that Saaya's hand on second picture?

i dont wear michael jackson style glothes, no

Theme is GREAT but the three slots ... as for those PCIE slots ... bad joke .. but I love that black and red theme so much

yeah, the third pciE 16x slot and the PCI slot should be swapped... ill push for that in the next board for sure!

My personal opinion looks sick, I'm in love but I don't know how i'm going to place a 3-sli in there

how about quadsli then using two dualgpu cards?

It says It's using Hybrid PWM, But All I see is Analog PWM.

its not a typical analog pwm... youll see more details soon

OK simply swapping the PCI with one of the PCIE slots would fix the tri sli spacing issue! I'm sure there's more to it than that, but it seems so simple...

if you do that, then you gotta move a whole lot of traces around... thats the problem... it was set wrong in the initial design, and changing it afterwards would have taken 2 weeks just to work on the layout, then debugging and testing of the new layout, so overall it would have caused quite some delays... and since there will be dualgpu cards from nvidia soon this layout should work fine then

bro id soooo love to chuck my 780i out the window even with all the dang nb/sb EK blocks!!!

there should be third party waterblocks fitting on the mobo heatsink btw

[Revv23]

would this PWM be similar to giga's new high frequency analog used on their UD3 boards?

[ShArKo]

wwwowwwwww...........that is a real nice motherboard........

Anybody know how much cost???

[Bojamijams]

that water block better not have any aluminum whatsoever...

[SNiiPE_DoGG]

that water block better not have any aluminum whatsoever...

Don't worry, I'm already designing a copper one for it

[hoax]

this is the best looking board ever. even better then my maximus II formula!

+1

[Praz]

The board seems well thought out. May have to see about picking one up myself.

[MomijiTMO]

Yay the wb isn't aluminium

[EliTE22]

red & black sick
so how does this thing oc

[Swatrecon_]

Ownage, I'm lovin the colors.

[cegras]

I wonder if companies design board layouts to be bad on purpose, because it's just so easy to put all sata's as right angles, for example. Maybe they do it on purpose so we have to buy better featured and more expensive boards for the layouts and other things.

[quake6]

About WB block,is there going to be something for dice like on BO?

[saaya]

People care about it cause it shows they care more about a marketing gimmic aimed at fools then enthusiasts, OR it shows that they dont know what their doing as far as watercooling goes, in which case they shouldn't even pretend to by making a built in block. Asus is just as bad.

x58 gets about as hot as x48, and a waterblock is def nice, especially if you watercool the cpu and dont have much airflow in the system

seriously, what's up with those PCIe x16 connectors? you can't fit three dual slot cards for 3-way sli (gtx 280) ??

its optimized for dual gpu cards...

Who is coming up with these names.... it is getting redonkulous.
I mean what is next? Continuum Blaster Maxium Flux Hymen Buster ?

so what should we and other companies call settings and add-ons then?
foxconn 12v 30cfm 40mm fan?
asus 4mm fitting copper waterblock?
:P

I hope this doesn't come out months after the cpu's launch.

soon!

Doesn't matter what the power circiut is as long as it has been designed properly.

exactly! digital packs more punch in the same size of a chip, and it can respond to voltage drops faster, but how much faster and if that really makes a difference... hard to tell... there are very good analog pwms out there... in the end the only way to tell which pwm is better is to test the same cpu on several pwms and see which clocks it higher...

how fast a pwm is clocked, how many amps it can deliver and everything else is just theory and marketing in the end, cause it might be of no use in the real world.

I guess, although I would cite the EVGA 790i FTW analogue vs digital as an example that, in general, digital circuits tend to perform better.

i wouldnt say that... digital has more potential, yes, but that doesnt mean digital solutions are necessarily better.

with all the hype about digital pwms lately i really think it has become a powerful marketing term, and people prefer a digital pwm over analog even if the latter is better.

I think digital vrm only is a blessing for people pumping crazy volts under LN2. For normal users, I don't think it matters one bit.

not necessarily, digital CAN be more power efficient than analog afaik... look at the 16 phase analog solution from asus, thats only useful for ln2 as well... even for a qx9770 for 24/7 all you need is probabaly 4 phases...

keyword currently, later we WILL use more

when do you need more than 6Gb? in a few months there will be 4Gb sticks... i think 6GB will be way enough throughout 2009 if your only gaming and dont use any professional media apps.

New pictures of what seems to be the final design... heatpipe is now aluminum-colored. Bloodrage lettering has been added too.
There is also something new (with the ''Quantum Force'' lettering) at the bottom-right in the first picture, but I have no clue what it could be.
Anyone have a clue?

I like it alot!

its the memory pwm heatsink
3 phase pwm, same as the cpu pwm!
canpak analogue mosfets controlled and clocked by digital pwm controllers as far as i understood the engineers.

would this PWM be similar to giga's new high frequency analog used on their UD3 boards?

more or less, yeah

that water block better not have any aluminum whatsoever...

nope, not at all... and its quite heavy!

I wonder if companies design board layouts to be bad on purpose, because it's just so easy to put all sata's as right angles, for example. Maybe they do it on purpose so we have to buy better featured and more expensive boards for the layouts and other things.

not everybody wants all sata slots in 90 degree angles, and i dont see whats wrong with having some of them upright?

About WB block,is there going to be something for dice like on BO?

yes!!!

[Slovnaft]

taking a second look at that layout, it actually looks like one might be able to insulate that without elf fingers!