Foxconn Blood Rage

Other Considerations

In the box is a registration card that allows you to get to the inner gubbins of the Quantum Force website. Without it though, there's still access to beta BIOS updates, downloads, and some old tutorials from 2008 that could really do with being updated.

The forums link to XtremeSystems (somewhat unsurprisingly) where most of worlds extreme overclockers seem to hang out, so at least Foxconn recognises not to try and harvest a new community when there are already some great existing ones to invest in.

A sticking point with us is the warranty - Foxconn says three years, which is on the better side of average (most offer two to three), but Foxconn's position in RMAing motherboards damaged by overclocking is that "it depends." It's of the opinion that most other extreme motherboard manufacturers don't warrant these kind of issues and abuse, so why should it?

To us, that's a failing. Why engineer and endorse a board to do sub-zero temps after being submerged with liquid nitrogen, that will offer some extreme voltages and hardcore settings, then when things go wrong it holds its hands up, effectively saying "your £300 investment is now a brick." That isn't exactly going to entice new members into "The Force", especially since to pro guys get their kit for free anyway.

The next point we've seen is quite a few people critisise Foxconn for is the lack of six memory slots, and to be honest we feel this criticism is needless. It does lack upgradability, but rarely will people need more than 6GB of memory, which is readily available, for even heavy multitasking use or gaming. 4GB DIMMs will arrive soon enough affording 12GB from three slots and if you need any more then you're simply buying the wrong board - your target purchase is a workstation class product.

Foxconn made the call and we completely agree with its position - the extra space affords better tracing, less interference and the space for more components to increase the degree of overclocking - exactly what this board is designed to do. There is enough board choice out there with six slots on it, and we commend Foxconn for taking yet another engineering consideration over tickbox non-feature-features, just like the lack of power saving hardware because despite its 30W higher loaded power consumption, it would be an oxymoron. If other manufacturers can hit extreme overclocking levels with six slots full, then a huge kudos to them, but we'd argue it's a rare requirement.


Some of Foxconn's marketing material for its Blood Rage might well be BS, but most of the engineering decisions we've seen do make sense even if it does suffer from a bit of over-engineering in our opinion. During the review of this board we thought about how much we'd love to see a cost down approach that still affords a "very good" level of overclocking that most of us will want, but it's also far more affordable. Foxconn seems to have come to answer our prayers with its Flaming Blade board (although it does depend on the final MSRP).

Its Quantum Force engineering division is still a separate company to its main channel range however and the two are much further apart in terms of quality than you can imagine. Throughout the whole review process we have been thoroughly impressed with what the Quantum Force division has become and all the right pieces have finally been put in place - for that we give oodles of kudos.

Performance Conclusions and Value

In terms of general performance after some memory tweaking though, it just doesn't keep up with the other boards we've tested. Despite this being an "extreme OC" board, it still has to cut it in general performance otherwise you might as well just buy something else. It's certainly not that much slower but it's notably lower in every test and in an e-peen world of extreme overclocking or benchmarketing this means the overclock has to be that-much-more to make up for it.

That's not the preferred method of breaking benchmarking records. Accordingly, it does overclock very well, although under air cooling we found not as much as the Rampage II Extreme and not a whole lot more than other high end boards like the P6T Deluxe to be honest (which itself is a great board mind).

SLI performance was the notable winner and overall the difference is certainly not that noticeable in testing. However, if I was the one dropping the serious cash on a hardcore overclocking motherboard we'd want it to be the leanest, meanest, badest bit of kit on the block. And with plenty of other hardcore opposition out there, we've got choice to spare as well.

At £275, it's far more expensive than the Asus P6T Deluxe and equals the price of the "OC Palm" edition which affords more in the box features, although it's plenty cheaper than the Rampage II Extreme, and £5 to 15 cheaper than the DFI UT X58 and the MSI Eclipse SLI, but it's about £25 more expensive than the EVGA X58 SLI which now has Shamino behind it. Foxconn fits in quite nicely and while not cheap enough for many its bundle and featureset makes it feel pretty much worth it.

Final Thoughts

At the end of the day, this is the best Foxconn motherboard we've ever seen. Period. Finally, Foxconn has a competitive product - the Blood Rage is an over-engineered and power hungry beast of a product that excels in build quality, design ideals and was perfectly stable for us.

However, its core performance doesn't hit the mark when there's so much competition out there. If you don't care about Foxconn's attitude to the warranty, the Blood Rage is great board for overclocking and playing with, but this mix alone won't be right for everyone - you've got to really want it.

• Performance
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• 7/10

• Features
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• 9/10

• Value
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• -
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• 7/10

• Overall
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• -
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• 8/10

Score Guide