ECS X58B-A Black Edition Motherboard Review

Overclocking

Compared to the last ECS board I reviewed, the ECS X58B-A surprised me with it’s overclocking functionality. I was able to pull a 185MHz base clock for a 38.7% overclock with my Core i7 920. Strangely enough no matter what multiplier I used, 185MHz was the maximum base clock so my maximum frequency was 3700MHz with the 185MHz base clock and the 20x multiplier.

185MHz bclk isn’t that impressive but it isn’t something to snuff at also. ECS claims to have hit 200+MHz bclk but I just couldn’t crack that 185MHz wall with the voltage ranges I was comfortable using at this stage. I’m still quite new to Core i7 and I don’t know what my safe tolerances are so I stuck with 1.325vCORE, 1.4 vQPI, and 1.65vDIMM for my tests. Temperatures were hitting 75C on the box cooler but the system was stable. The fact that it will loop 3DMark Vantage at 185MHz but blue-screen at 186MHz sounds like a BIOS bug to me.