ASUS Republic of Gamers and X79 ROG Review – Rampage IV Gene, Formula and Extreme
by Ian Cutress on August 3, 2012 1:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- Asus
- X79
- ROG
Rampage IV Extreme In The Box
The Rampage IV Extreme should bring in the motherboard. If it helps the users, it should be in here. What we have:
Rear IO Panel
User Guide
Driver CD
OC Key
Q-Connectors
X-Socket (for LGA1366 compatibility)
Eight SATA Cables
Large 2-way SLI Bridge
Rigid 3-way SLI Bridge
Rigid 4-way SLI Bridge
Large 2-way CrossFire Bridge
The surprise here comes in the addition of a CrossFire bridge, something you almost never see in an Intel bundle. Overclockers of NVIDIA graphics cards are well catered for here – I always prefer a rigid multi-GPU connector during testing. The OC Key, as mentioned, will be discussed later, and comes with an OC Key cable. As much as I would have liked a USB 3.0 panel here, it makes more sense to add one to the Formula.
Board Features
| ASUS Rampage IV Extreme | |
| Price | Link to Newegg |
| Size | ATX |
| CPU Interface | LGA2011 |
| Chipset | Intel X79 |
| Power Delivery | Intel Second Generation Core i7 Sandy Bridge E |
| Memory Slots |
Eight DDR3 DIMM slots supporting up to 64 GB Up to Quad Channel DDR3, 1066-2400 MHz |
| Video Outputs | None |
| Onboard LAN | Intel |
| Onboard Audio | Realtek ALC898 |
| Expansion Slots |
1 x PCIe 3.0 x16 (red) 1 x PCIe 3.0 x16/x8 (red) 2 x PCIe 3.0 x8 (red) 1 x PCIe 3.0 x8 (gray) 1 x PCIe 2.0 x1 |
| Onboard SATA/RAID |
2 Intel SATA 6 Gbps, supporting RAID 0, 1, 5, 10 4 Intel SATA 3 Gbps, supporting RAID 0, 1, 5, 10 2 ASMedia SATA 6 Gbps |
| USB |
8 ASMedia USB 3.0 (4 back panel, 4 onboard) 12 Intel USB 2.0 (8 back panel, 4 onboard) |
| Onboard |
2 x USB 3.0 Headers 2 x USB 2.0 Headers 4 x SATA 6 Gbps 4 x SATA 3 Gbps 8 x Fan Headers 1 x SPDIF Output Header 1 x OC Key Header 1 x OT Header 2 x Subzero Sense Connectors 1 x Slow Mode Switch 7 x Measurement Points 3 x Thermal Sensor Connectors 1 x LN2 Mode Header 1 x Q Reset Switch 1 x VGA Hotwire Headers Power/Reset Buttons BIOS Switch Button Go Button |
| Power Connectors |
24-Pin ATX Power Connector 8-Pin CPU 12V Power Connector 4-Pin CPU 12V Power Connector 6-Pin PCIe Power Connector |
| Fan Headers |
2 x CPU Fan Headers 3 x Chassis Fan Headers 3 x Optional Fan Headers |
| IO Panel |
1 x PS/2 Combination Port 1 x Bluetooth Module 2 x eSATA 6 Gbps 1 x Gigabit Ethernet 4 x USB 3.0 8 x USB 2.0 1 x Optical SPDIF Output 5 x Audio Jacks 1 x Clear CMOS Button 1 x ROG Connect |
| Warranty Period | 3 Years with ASUS Premium Service |
| Product Page | Link |
You want it, the Extreme should have it (unless you want WiFi or dual NICs). The main features of the Extreme come in the form of the overclocking tools – VGA Hotwire, SubZero Sense, ROG Connect, the OC Key, and the measuring points. The audio could have been moved out onto a separate card, in order to give more real estate on the board, or sold separately.
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34 Comments
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jontech - Friday, August 3, 2012 - link
But sounds kind of cool,.Helps that Asus makes it :)
Paulman - Friday, August 3, 2012 - link
Asus Republic of Gamers also holds Starcraft tournaments, as well! That's how I first heard of their brand. In fact, the ASUS ROG Starcraft II Summer 2012 tournament is on right now and I'm watching a game vs. EG.IdrA and EG.Puma (same team, but one American teammate versus a Korean teammate).For more info on this tourney, see: http://rog.asus.com/142982012/gaming/join-the-rog-...
primeval - Friday, August 3, 2012 - link
A fun tournament thus far.For the branding portion of this article, I highly recommend checking out some of ASUS ROG's commercials. They have been playing throughout the aforementioned tournament and I have to say they are probably the best hardware commercials I have ever seen in terms of production quality. I think that if you see a few of those commercials, you may be able to further rationalize the branding award.
Meaker10 - Friday, August 3, 2012 - link
1x/16x/8x/16x would kill any dual card setup in a micro atx case, kinda defeating the point....just4U - Friday, August 3, 2012 - link
the 8x slot is rather pointless...danjw - Friday, August 3, 2012 - link
I would rather see an article on the Ivybridge ROG motherboards then the Sandybridge-E ones. These are very niche boards, though I guess that is only slightly less true of the Ivybridge boards. For heavily threaded and memory intensive applications Sandybridge-E will win. But not really on much else, though they are chosen by some just because they are the most expensive.StevoLincolnite - Friday, August 3, 2012 - link
Also, Sandy Bridge overclocks higher and throws out less heat, because of the silly design choice that Intel made in regards to the heat spreader compound.Not a problem for those who are up to the task of removing the IHS or lapping.
Sad part is that Ivy Bridge actually has nice thermals and power consumption at stock; which could have translated well for enthusiasts.
IvyBridge-E should be out within the next year, haswell will get released and the cycle shall continue.
Hopefully we get 8 core Ivybridge-E chips, which is severely lacking on the Socket 2011 platform with the 3930K's being die harvested 8 core chips, plus most socket 2011 motherboards will take an Ivybridge-e chip anyway, when they're released.
danjw - Friday, August 3, 2012 - link
I was just looking at "leaked" slide that shows Ivy Bridge-E out in Q3 2013 and Haswell out in Q2 2013. I really don't see what the point is of an Ivy Bridge-E if Haswell beats it to the market. With Sandy Bridge-E they released it before the Ivy Bridge tock. I just don't see why that would make much sense.Assimilator87 - Saturday, August 4, 2012 - link
Haswell will probably be limited to four cores, whereas Ivy Bridge-E will scale up to ten cores.mapesdhs - Wednesday, May 9, 2018 - link
I was hunting for R4E refs and found this. It's strange reading what people expected was going to happen back when the R4E was new. IB-E with 10 cores eh? Oh well. Mind you, that did happen with IB-EP, and infact the XEON E5-2680 v2 is one of the best upgrades one can do for an X79 mbd, at least for threaded performance anyway. Hard to avoid wondering how things would have panned out if the 3930K had simply been a fully functional 8-core in the first place, instead of the crippled sampled chip consumers were offered. However, I obtained quite a few, and they still work pretty well, especially with so many PCIe lanes to play with, and it's cool being able to use a 950 Pro to boot from NVMe (comes with its own boot ROM), though the ROG forum does have a thread with custom BIOS profiles available to add native NVMe boot support to various ASUS mbds.