ASUS RAMPAGE II Extreme

Rampage II- with the Republic of Gamers branding, this Monster of a motherboard from ASUS is aimed towards the EXTREME users. Everything you need + More= ASUS Rampage II.
This board is ASUS’ second release for the Core i7 platform the first being the P6T (x58)

BOX AND WHAT’S INSIDE.

One of the great things I like about the box is you will never mistake it for anything else. “RAMPAGE II EXTREME” is boldly placed at the center of a Bright Red Motive box. Aside from the Republic of Gamers branding, you will see the processor support, chipset type and ATI and AMD multi card badges.

Before opening the box, it also comes with a flip cover, which when flipped, gives you a peek of what to expect inside. This would be good for resellers because they will be able to display this awesome piece of hardware without the need to open the box. You see, extreme enthusiasts can tend to get extremely meticulous about buying $$$ hardware. Most likely if there is a portion of the box that’s torn, they won’t take it anymore. So the FLIP top box is a + for all resellers!

On the TOP of the Flip, it basically gives you a run down on the highlights of the board and at the back, you will see all the specifications you need to know when buying a board like this.
In my opinion, the box was designed to make anyone who goes over it drool.

DVD Driver, APS and Software- IT comes with 3D marks Vantage benchmarking software for vista, making it very clear that if you have this board, you have to overclock it.
It has 6 Sata Cables and 1 IDE cable, making sure you get everything you need to connect all your drives. Since crossfire link connectors always comes with CF-ready ATI cards, this board only came along with two types of SLI connectors, a three way tri-SLI connector and a 2 way one.
Optional bridge cooler is provided as well if you intend to put a passive cooler on the CPU.
If you do not have a front panel port on your case, which is very unlikely, you will have the option to plug in a PCI dual USB and firewire panel at the back. For Extremist though, I am sure this will just get in the way of their TRI-Sli setup so this will probably remain in the box for most people.
Now here is another accessory I used to only see on MSI boards: A creative sound card. Well, MSI had it built in their board and ASUS had it as and add on card. I would have preferred it to be built-in just to make more room for my videos cards, but after testing it, it does not really get in the way, although it does eat up breathing room for the video cards we tested it with. The nice thing about this though is it makes you feel you got your money’s worth because you don’t have to shell out more for a separate high quality sound card.

Now, one of the coolest things is the Post screen. This is a mini LCD which you place outside your system or even stretch it out to your desk if you wanted to. I like to place ours just inside the glass window so it stays protected as well from envious onlooker’s lolz. Old motherboards started with POST beeps. For every beep you hear during boot up, there is a corresponding meaning. Like a beep that goes wild like a siren would mean there is something wrong with your processor, or long beeps would mean memory issues. Well basically, the beep has evolved into the post screen. Old post screens like I have seen in Epox motherboards showed us digital letters and numbers which you would then consult to a manual for the actual meaning. With this POST screen it just tells you what the heck is going on. ASUS, you really know how to spoil a gamer!


Now, the moment we have all been waiting for, the BOARD. For one, I really get goosebumps just by looking at it. I am sure that even non-enthusiasts , average joe PC users or heck , even non-pc users would really stop by the window of a PC shop when they see this and 90% of’em would ask “how much is it?” The board just looks so fantastic. Imagine looking at a supped up car in an international motor show with the babe at the side. That is how it feels (even without the babe lol.)
Since most of you already know the basics of motherboards, I will just jump to the highlights:

- The board is made of black/dark brown 6 layer PCB measuring 30x24cm.

- It now comprises of a special Control Panel. This panel is equipped with a power and reset button that allows you to of course, power on and off or reset on the fly. It also has toggle buttons and a joystick that’s used for manual overclocking and selecting certain setup features on the board. This Panel was designed for those OVERCLOCKERS who don’t put their PC on a case.
Sunbeam Ultra Tech Station.

Most of these guys have either nitrogen cooling or a very efficient watercooling setup ready to set world records in the OC world. This is the first I have ever seen and I really dig it!
- Just below this unique control panel is another first. Open pin sockets that allow you to measure the voltage with a multimeter to get more accurate results. Again, overclockers will love this. No longer do they have to rely on software voltage readers which sometimes can be quite accurate.
- This board is also equipped with 6 DDR3 RAM slots, which one day, can give you about 48Gigs of RAM (through 6- 8 gig sticks- WOW) I am giving 8 gigs as an example because DDR2 already reached up to 8 gig and I don’t think that’s far from becoming real on DDR3.

- The board’s CPU area may appear a little tight because of the Proprietary cooling system Asus has placed that covers the ICH10R Southbridge, the Northbridge and the Mosfets . We were still able to fit in a SUNBEAM Core Contact Freezer with the i7 Adapter on it. BUT there was no way we could fit in the additional ASUS fan anymore. No worries, it says to use the fan only if your HS was on passive cooling.

- One of the board’s main highlights is the triple PCIxpress slots allowing you to put up to three nvidia cards in triple SLI mode or three ATI cards in triple crossfirex setup. You may also have a dual SLI or crossfirex setup and just use the third PCIE slot for a dedicated PHYSX video card using a lower end card. One thing to take note though is the clip locks of the PCIE slots to lock the video card in place. When we attempted to put the ASUS EAH 4870x2 TRIFAN on it, it just would not lock, when we tested it on the second PCIE slot, it did lock, BUT removing the card was so hard that we broke off the latch that releases the card from the lock. This is something ASUS has yet to work on. TAKE NOTE though, that even with the latch gone, the 2nd PCIE slot still worked when without problems and if this happened to you, just make sure to push the card back into place after travelling (to your favorite lan party) or if you can, get a case like the Silverstone RV01 which also has a special VGA support system that pushes the card and locks it into place. The PCIE slots were also a little too for comfort make it hard to put VGA’s with large HSF’s in crossfire or SLI mode, more so on triple setups but with the ASUS EAH 4870 Matrix, we had no issues in putting them up together.

- Let’s go to the rear I/O panel. The first thing you notice is the single PS2 port, it can be used for a mouse or a keyboard, whichever you choose to connect, and the second device must be used on USB. It gives you 6 USB slot, 2 Gigabit Lan ports, a firewire and ESATA port and of course, your digital audio optical out. Now, what I love about the rear panel is ASUS’s back unique back plate. It lights up. Remember those dark days where you have to crawl to the back of your casing to plug extra USB device and you have to fumble with a flashlight in your mouth just to get it in? Well, gone are those days with this board. Again, this is a feature I have only seen with ASUS.
- The board also gives you one IDE port to allow you to connect whatever IDE
device you have left. Frankly I like it, because I really opt to use my optical drives on IDE to save all those SATA ports for my hard drives.

Asus also paid attention to the details. Aside form the lights on the rear back panel. You will also see a lot of lights inside. The start and reset button, the ROG logo also pulsates. Definitely gives you a lot of bling to add to your bragging rights.

Well that’s about all I have for you for now. This board is an amazing product and is definitely worth the ROG branding. I am quite sure any gamer would give anything to get a board like this on their arsenal. If you want to find out more on this board’s Performance & Overclockability, do watch out for my future articles when we run this baby off the roof on the FU 2009 ULTIMATE RIG SETUP. You may also see this board in action and TEST for yourself on the Fineupgrades’ Roadshow happening very soon so don’t forget to come back here for more details. In fact, you will already see this board in play on my previous article, the ASUS 4870 MATRIX, do check that out as well if you haven’t for I am adding more results there too!

Special Thanks to ASUS Philippines for providing us with this board.