Foxconn Flaming Blade GTI review

£119
Price when reviewed

The Foxconn Flaming Blade GTI is a ludicrous name for a motherboard, even an enthusiasts’ one, and it’s rammed home with the subtlety of a burning elephant by a red and black colour scheme. But underneath the posturing lies the real attention grabber: at £101 exc VAT it’s by some distance the cheapest Intel X58 board we’ve seen.

Foxconn Flaming Blade GTI review

That chipset means it supports some of Intel’s fastest Core i7 processors, including the six-core i7-980X. Although these will soon be superseded by Sandy Bridge chips, there’s little doubt they’ll remain among the fastest CPUs around for some time yet.

Beside the processor sits a trio of DIMM sockets capable of handling 12GB of RAM. They’re joined by a pair of PCI-Express x16 slots, two PCI slots and a single PCI Express x4 slot.

Storage is handled by six SATA/300 sockets and, although that’s plenty, the budget hasn’t stretched to the newer SATA/600 standard. Although consumer hard disks and SSDs aren’t yet quick enough to take advantage of SATA/600’s increased bandwidth, it’s a mark off for the future.

Foxconn Flaming Blade GTI

Elsewhere, there’s an IDE socket, a pair of USB 2 jumpers and a floppy connector. We were disappointed by the meagre offering of just two fan connectors; once the single PWM-equipped connector is used for a CPU heatsink, that leaves room to power just a single case fan. The rest will have to hook directly to your power supply.

Despite its price, the Flaming Blade GTI lacks real enthusiast features. Aside from the two-character POST display in the bottom-right corner, there’s little to excite those who expect onboard power buttons or overclocking features. On the backplate sit eight USB 2 ports, PS/2, Gigabit Ethernet and the usual six audio jacks. Those hoping for USB 3, eSATA or FireWire, which are becoming standard on far cheaper boards, should turn to the Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R, which offers all three.

The BIOS is full of standard options, from boot controls to hardware monitoring tools, but it’s not particularly well organised. One menu contains options pertaining to Windows 95’s need for a floppy drive, and other choices come without any explanation of their functions. Overclocking tools are sequestered away in Foxconn’s Quantum BIOS screen, but again, there’s little here that you won’t find on rival boards.

In fact, if you’re after an X58 board this is essentially the vanilla option, which is a little disappointing at this price. With Gigabyte’s GA-X58A-UD3R offering more flexibility and futureproofing for only £20 more, the Flaming Blade GTI looks to have a lot of hot air but no real fire.

Details

Motherboard form factorATX
Motherboard integrated graphicsno

Compatability

Processor/platform brand (manufacturer)Intel
Processor socketLGA 1366
Motherboard form factorATX
Memory typeDDR3
Multi-GPU supportyes

Controllers

Motherboard chipsetIntel X58
South bridgeIntel ICH10
Number of Ethernet adapters1
Wired adapter speed1,000Mbits/sec
Graphics chipsetN/A
Audio chipsetRealtek HD Audio

Onboard Connectors

CPU power connector type8-pin
Main power connectorATX 24-pin
Memory sockets total3
Internal SATA connectors6
Internal PATA connectors1
Internal floppy connectors1
Conventional PCI slots total2
PCI-E x16 slots total2
PCI-E x8 slots total0
PCI-E x4 slots total1
PCI-E x1 slots total0

Rear ports

PS/2 connectors1
USB ports (downstream)8
FireWire ports0
eSATA ports0
Optical S/PDIF audio output ports0
Electrical S/PDIF audio ports0
3.5mm audio jacks6
Parallel ports0
9-pin serial ports0
Extra port backplane bracket portsN/A

Diagnostics and tweaking

Motherboard onboard power switch?no
Motherboard onboard reset switch?no
Software overclocking?yes

Accessories

SATA cables supplied2
Molex to SATA adaters supplied0
IDE cables supplied0
Floppy cables supplied0

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