Early Foxconn BloodRAGE boards haven’t been able to pass 103.4Mhz PCI-E, this mod unlocks the boards’ full potential.

By r1ch.

Here’s hoping this is as big a deal as it promises to be. First, the boring but oh-so-required legal bit.

NEITHER I, NOR BENCHTEC ACCEPT ANY RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR ACTIONS. I, WE, NOR FOXCONN WILL WARRANTY THIS MODIFICATION. IF YOU KILL YOUR BOARD YOU ONLY HAVE YOURSELF TO BLAME.

You’ll need to remove the heatsink assembly, and just to the right of the X58 chipset  you’ll find the following resistors.

Remove resistor from R128 and solder onto R125.

Before:

After:

The Foxconn BloodRAGE has taken some stick from early reviews, some justifiable, some just outright insulting. These reviews were based on immature BIOS’s and an apparent hard limit of 220 bclk, which at the time put the board toward the back of the pack in terms of overall satisfaction.

What this mod promises is something that is new to the BloodRAGE and that’s an open PCI-E clock range. Testing so far has taken the PCI-E from a fixed 100Mhz on early BIOS’s to 103Mhz using the G25 BIOS and now with this mod, I’ve just booted at 119Mhz and SetFSB to 120Mhz. As you’ll see from the desktop, this is my daily rig install so I’ve not gone past 120Mhz for the sole risk of SATA HDD corruption – it may well go further.

Ignore the CPU Mhz, I run 220×12 daily (need a better heatsink that isn’t a SS Phase) and dropped back to 133 Bclk for PCI-E testing.

Just 103Mhz opened up the bclk from a 220 hard limit to 229 with my i7 920 C0 stepping, this is looking good to finally take it over 230 – more testing to follow.

So, feel free to try it and report back in this forum thread. I’d be interested to hear how this mod helps you.