ASUS Republic of Gamers and X79 ROG Review – Rampage IV Gene, Formula and Extreme

In the ASUS range, certain features are still above and beyond those from other manufacturers.  We mention and explain them here for completeness.

ASUS Q-LED and Debug LED

One of the most nerve-wracking things to do with a PC is diagnose a fault.  System builders and enthusiasts with some experience would have come across this – a family member's machine, a customer's machine, or even their own computer for some reason will not turn on properly.  In certain circumstances, no video will display.  As a result, there could be a million and one different reasons, possibly including:

Dead CPU
Bad CPU pins
CPU overheating
CPU cooler not seated properly
CPU fan not connected
CPU fan broken
Dead memory
Incompatible memory
Short circuit
Power cable not connected
Power cable dead
Power supply dead
Power supply overheating
Hard Drive not working
Hard Drive not plugged in
No power to hard drive
SATA cable dead
SATA ports not working
Front panel not connected properly
Front panel switch broken
Internal wire broken
VGA not seated properly
VGA in wrong slot
VGA without power
Power cable to VGA broken
Power cable to VGA wrong
VGA not working
VGA overheating
VGA dead
DVI cable dead

I have at some point or another had all of these happen (except perhaps dead CPU, I am careful with that), including that last one which took 2+ hours to diagnose as I had never considered it a possibility.  Seriously, having a dead DVI/VGA cable is a hellish experience, because as a system builder you are sure that the incompatibility is something more serious.  I eventually tried the cable in my laptop and that did not work either, indicating a bad cable.

Without any way of determining the error, the fixer must go through systematically what could be wrong, either by other symptoms or trial and error.  In recent years, diagnosing these faults has gotten easier – a substantial number of common enthusiast motherboards come with a two-digit debug system which displays a code from 00 to FF (in hexadecimal).  This code indicates which part of the POST system is being tested, and if it should hang on a certain code, the fixer can look up a reference table to find what the issue is.

This is not an ASUS specific feature – it comes as standard on most of the top tier manufacturers mid-range channel products and above.  ASUS however did not get much positive feedback for this – users did not know what the codes meant, as some were ambiguous (00 means dead CPU, but could be the result of many things and the CPU isn’t actually dead, it just doesn’t wake up), and some were erroneous (the error code showed the result, not the original cause).  In order to combat this, ASUS provides most of their range with Q-LED.

Q-LED is a series of LEDs that light up alongside the board as the POST sequence continues.  Each are labeled, i.e. CPU_POST, VGA_POST, DIMM_POST, such that if the board should fail for whatever reason, the user can easily see which area of the board is in need of assistance.  Users could then look up the two-digit code if required.

ASUS Fans and Fan Controllers

When considering a system, all sorts of features come in to play – budget, performance, accessories, IO options, everything.  Two areas to which a lot of people are concerned with are noise and temperatures.  Being able to control these two is a key part of their system build.

The noisiest components in a system build are the fans.  However, the fans also aid the airflow for temperature.  To strike that fine balance is tricky, but being able to control it is a dark art.  Many years ago, motherboards were just starting to add headers onboard such that users could plug in their own fans with one of two speeds – 100% on or completely off.  As time went on, manufacturers used fan controllers which could be adjusted in relation to the temperature sensors on board – a simple gradient with a start and end point based on temperature or load.

A lot of manufacturers stopped there, but ASUS decided to go one step further and offer the complete works.  The fan controllers ASUS use are hardware built on software, such that the software can talk to the whole board (every temperature sensor, even other fans) to relay the correct speed of the fan needed.  This leaves the user to state multi-point gradients, or in later iterations let the speed of a fan be dependant on the weighted average of several temperatures on board.

I draw from my own experience – when doing casual work, or watching videos, I would like my computer to be dead silent.  So I use ASUS’ software to control my fans to be as fast as they can without being audible.  This causes the system to get a little warm, but it can cope with the temperature rise.  The minute I do some heavy work that causes CPU loads to increase such that the fans cannot cope, the fans switch into a more severe mode.  When I am gaming, donning a full headset to cancel out other noise, the fans go into full speed to ensure that even at the height of the battle, the temperatures inside my PC are still appropriate for the components doing the heavy work.  No other manufacturer allows me to control my fan settings as easily and clearly than ASUS, and this is applied across their entire range of motherboards.

ASUS USB BIOS Flashback

Picture the scenario: you have an older motherboard and a new but compatible processor.  Attempting to fire up the system results in not a lot happening, and the first thought is that something is broken.  There is also a possibility that the BIOS of the motherboard cannot handle the processor in question.  A recent example of this is with the Z68 motherboard range for Sandy Bridge - they can use Ivy Bridge processors, but only if the BIOS is a recent release.

Previous methods to solve this would be to get hold of an older processor, boot up the system, then update the BIOS.  ASUS have decided to implement a system that does away with the need for a processor, a GPU, or even memory in order to update the BIOS.  This is what ASUS call USB BIOS Flashback.

With selected motherboards, a user can place the latest version of the motherboard's BIOS on a USB stick, rename it, and then plug it in to the white USB port on the IO panel.  Hold the ROG Connect button until it starts flashing, let go, and then wait until it stops flashing.  When it stops, the BIOS update has finished and the system has the new BIOS.  Sounds like a good idea in practice - I actually tried this on the Rampage IV Gene as part of my testing, and it was flawless.

The ASUS website for this procedure is http://event.asus.com/2012/mb/USB_BIOS_Flashback_GUIDE/.

I should point out an issue to which extreme overclockers should be wary.  If you are using a modified ASUS BIOS for overclocking (such as one of the Shamino specials) then USB BIOS Flashback will not work.  It will not update to the special BIOS or from the special BIOS to one of the standard ones.  I tried this with the RIVE (going from 0018 to 1305), but it was a no go.  Confirmation from ASUS states that this is an untested scenario - only the mainstream BIOSes are guaranteed to work with USB BIOS Flashback.  However, for 99.9% of users, they are unaffected.

ASUS USB 3.0 Boost

Evolution is a key part of technology.  The need for faster machines, high performance interfaces and innovation drive everything forward.  So if we consider that most machines run on Windows 7, this is an operating system released back in October 2009, and for the most part is built on principles dating back further than that.  One of these principles is the USB interface.

Back in 2009, USB 3.0 was only just being released to mass market.  Since then, new hardware and software methods have developed in order to use the interface more effectively.  But Windows utilization is still limited to a large extent to USB 2.0, relying on USB 3.0 drivers and the physical controllers themselves to manage data between the interfaces.

The two main improvements over the standard method of interaction are the inclusion of BOT (Bulk Only Transfers), and UASP (USB Attached SCSI Protocol).  The goal of BOT is to increase throughput speed by not focusing on latency, and can be achieved through a rewrite of the Windows driver to allow these additional commands, as seen on ASRock motherboards and their XFast system (a licensed bit of software).  The downsides to this addition is that it is only limited to one USB (2.0 or 3.0) device at a time.

UASP was introduced as an improvement to BOT for USB 3.0 only, and uses the SCSI command set to manipulate data.  This requires both a hardware implementation (ASUS use an ASMedia controller) as well as software (AI Suite) to override the standard driver.  UASP focuses mainly on improving small data size transfers, specifically those used by operating systems in the background, making a USB stick a viable option to use as an everyday frequently accessed USB device (such as a portable email client).

In some circumstances, peak performance of USB 3.0 ports using UASP may worse than those from the chipset (which can fall back on DRAM speed), but by performing an ATTO test the differences are clear.  In our test of the ASUS P8Z77-V Pro, we saw that the chipset USB 3.0 performed at peak faster, but at low (<128KB) file sizes the read and write speeds of UASP were orders of magnitude higher.

This will become a moot point in Windows 8, which should use the UASP advantages automatically where it can over the standard USB functionality.