Packaging

The ECS X79R-AX comes in one of the largest blue boxes we've seen yet. The board's name is boldly printed on the front in white, with and image of a red dragon just to the right, under which we find a gold "Black Extreme" logo denoting the X79R-AX as ECS's top-level X79 Express product. There are several logos across the bottom, denoting a few specific features as well as a "QR" logo for smartphones that directs users to info about the board. Flipping the box over, we find more detail about the board's included features, with an image of the board itself in the middle. The front of the box has a panel that has some visually descriptive information as well, and opening that panel also reveals a window in the box that allows a view of the board itself, nestled in a standard anti-static bag.


Unlike other boxes, we find the ECS X79R-AX has a couple of laces on the top, tied in a bow and holding the lid shut. Once undone and the lid is lifted, we can slide the inner packaging out, which reveals itself to be a series of pullout drawers.


Once we pulled out the inner drawers, we find the board itself on top, secured in a tray of cardboard with a piece of foam slid between the tray and the board itself to help keep the board in place. Lifting the board's drawer, we find a cardboard divider as seen in the second image above, and under that we find another tray, covered with what appears to be a couple of flaps that lift up from the sides towards the middle. We lifted one side and the entire cover came off, revealing all the board's goodies below, several pounds worth of goodies, in fact.

Contents

The high-end ECS X79R-AX comes with quite a fair bit of accessories, as we mentioned. We find a couple of manuals, a driver disc, a SATA cable for every SATA port combined in three different varieties, a single extended SLI bridge, the rear I/O cover, a front panel USB 3.0 bracket, and two baggies that contain dust caps for unused ports on the board’s back panel. Take a quick look below to find a full listing of what's inside the X79R-AX's box:

• 1x I/O Shield
• 1x User Manual
• 1x Quick Install guide
• 1x SLI Bridges
• 2x Baggies of Dust Caps
• 1x Driver CD
• 2x SATA 3 Gb/s cables with locking pins (orange)
• 2x SATA 6 Gb/s cables with locking pins (red)
• 8x SATA 6 Gb/s cables with locking pins (black)
• 1x ECS USB 3.0 Front Panel Bracket