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Alright. I hope you guys are in for a long one because this is gonna take a little bit.
This is gonna be like the Striker 2 Extreme motherboard review. It's gonna take a while.
And that's because there's a lot of stuff.
There's so much stuff that they give you a complete additional box to go with it.
And, it's filled with goodies.
So, take a look. We're looking at the Asus Rampage Extreme.
Which is a very, very, very, very expensive and high-end motherboard.
This is not for everybody. But this is probably
the baddest motherboard I ever gotten my hands on.
Unbelievable, in the features that it comes with, how fast it will do everything.
And all the little extras you get. Like this little sound card.
The FX Supreme, which is kinda cool. And is upside down. There it is right side up.
This just comes with it. They don't want you to have onboard sound,
so they give you a sound card in the box. And that's one of many, many things.
Let's get right into it. First I want to talk about the old Rampage...
or a the new Rampage actually, the Formula.
The Formula is very similar, it's X48 but it uses DDR2, so don't confuse the two.
This is the Extreme. You can tell by the water cooling block right there, the fusion system.
And it's pretty obvious it's the Rampage Extreme. If you look at the chipset cooler,
it says Extreme. Looks really cool.
And it looks pretty much very similar like the Rampage Formula, but slightly different.
This is kinda different right here. The fusion blocks are different
and the water cooling is painted red.
But it does have some interesting features that are very close to the Formula.
Such as, ridiculous amount of overclocking capability.
So the Asus Rampage Extreme is actually the first board
that they designed specifically for overclockers. It has overclockers in mind.
You can tell right there on the box, it says "Designed for Overclocking".
And that's what it's for and it does it with immense finesse.
It's amazing at overclocking, it's really good. It's designed specifically for overclockers.
If you want to game obviously you could.
But pretty much what this does is overclock like a P54 chipset would,
but it does give you 2 lanes of X16 PCI-Ex 2.0, which is very important
if you're gonna go all out and you're overclocking like crazy.
It's got a BIOS that is great.
When you first turn on the computer, you get into the BIOS,
it doesn't show you any type of information on your boot priority or any of that stuff.
It just goes straight to the overclocking. That's the first screen you're going to see.
So, it's really impressive.
Let me get the demo out of the way and show you all the stuff on the board.
And then I'm gonna go jump right in to the special overclocking features.
What differentiates this board from others on the market?
So, let's take a look at the board. Just taking a look over the socket,
you can see that there are a lot of capacitors and mosefests all around the board.
And that's because at a 16 phase power for the CPU.
The front side bus will support 1600 MHz. Front side bus for Intel processors Socket 775.
The Socket 775 right there will support all your 45nm processors,
your Yorkfields, and your Wolfdales. And pretty much up to 1600 MHz front side bus native.
And then of course it will go way past that if you overclock it.
It is the X48 chipset. It uses the ICH9R Southbridge chipset.
And up to 8 GB of DDR3. Ok? So that's a lot.
And it will to the 1600 MHz native. And it will do 1800 and 2000 MHz with overclocking no problem.
It also supports the Intel XMP, which is the Extreme Memory Profiles.
Which is.. let's see... how you describe that?
It's sort of like... in videos SLI EPP. It's like that, but it's for Intel chipsets.
And that pretty much has these predefined profiles
with high frequency or low latency overclocks for your memory. And it's all automatic.
You pretty much just pick out what you wanna do
and it will overclock the memory pretty much automatically.
Looking down here, you do get two PCI Express x16 2.0 slots that are right there.
And you also get 2 PCI slots. These are the 2.2 version.
And then you also get two PCI Express x1 slots as well.
This is a third PCI Express x1 slot up here but this is for the audio card
that comes with the box. Or, in the box, sorry.
So, another thing interesting that you'll notice, if you actually have two double slot cards here.
You actually get to keep a PCI and a PCI Express x1. Which is interesting.
If you're doing triple SLI on a video board, a lot of times you lose all your slots, here you don't.
You still get to keep one of these and one of these, which is really, really nice.
Let's see, what else can we talk to you about?
6 SATA headers are onboard. And there's actually 6 right here.
These are controlled by the ICH9R. And there's also a separate controller for the IDE.
And for the floppy, and for the extra set of headers that are over here.
These two are gonna do Raid 0+1.
These guys over here are gonna do 0, 1, 5, JBOD, pretty much whatever you want.
These are actually on a separate controller. These two are on the Silicone 5723 controller.
And this one are controlled by the Southbridge the ICH9R.
You also get a Marvel 88 SE 6121 controller. Which is what Asus uses for all its boards.
It's for the parallel, and for one of the CRLT which is actually used for the external or eSATA.
You also get dual gigabit LAN. So, I guess we'll move right over here.
You get dual gigabit LAN, which is very nice.
It does uses a teaming, which is gonna let you pretty much,
if one of these is stuck for a sec, the other one will take over the load for the network.
So you never have any lag while you're gaming.
It also uses AL Net 2. Which is pretty much a power saving feature.
It will determine how long your Ethernet cable is,
and power down the port until it's just enough to get you connected.
You got right there a Firewire, an eSATA. Right over here, it's your clear CMOS button.
Or CMOuS, however you wanna pronounce it.
So it's right on the back and it's big. Really easy if you're overclocking a lot.
You're probably not gonna use this because this thing has 2 BIOS chips on it.
So, it's hard to mess up both of them at the same time.
And then you also have 4, actually 6 USB 2.0's all along the bottom.
As well as this Legacy PS2 adapter.
Down here you will also notice that you have a lot of headers.
So your headers are for USB and for Firewire.
So you can have 1 header for Firewire, and then you have 6 extra headers for USB's.
You have 6 on the back, and you have an additional 6 which can go to your front panel,
or wherever you want it to go.
That's pretty much it as far as the specs on the simple stuff goes.
Now, let's get in to the overclocking features. Which there are a lot of.
Starting with these 2 chips down here. If you noticed, those are 2 BIOS chips.
So, if one of your BIOS goes corrupt, you're going way too far on your overclock,
you have the second one as a backup.
The other thing is that this thing has something called an LCD poster
combined with a program called TweakIt.
TweakIt is actually controlled down here.
You use your LCD poster, and you use this little tiny joystick and these two little buttons.
And it's really amazing. It's actually quite awesome. I'll tell you what it does.
You can actually overclock with the operating system running.
Your computer could be literally performing a benchmark while you're overclocking from this.
Using you LCD poster, LCD screen and this little controller,
you can actually increase your front side bus, you can control all your voltages,
you can control all your frequencies. And you can even monitor your fan speeds,
your voltages, your frequencies. You can monitor and change it on the fly.
Even if you're in the operating system you can still do it. So that's really good.
You also get "on and off" button, and a "reset" button.
Which are useful if you're a big mess and you overclock a lot.
And like I already mentioned you have the clear CMOS button right there.
Let me talk to you about some of the other features.
First of all you're gonna notice, obviously, this board can be water-cooled.
You can cool your Northbridge, your Southbridge,
your mosefets and your VRMs all through here.
It's all unified system with heat pipes, and it's also water coolable.
You also have the option of not water cooling and just run it passively,
which is not a problem. Or, you can run it actively and throw a fan on here.
Speaking of fans, let me actually pop out the accessory box.
Because it has so much stuff in it. It's really crazy.
You gotta love this. Let's start off with these two big boxes.
These are kinda cool. Check this out. An extra cooler. For your mosefets.
Very large, and pretty much replaces... goes this way... replaces this little one down here.
So you wanna kick that one out of the way and put this one? You very well can.
You got another one over here. Amazing. This will just replace your factory.
If you don't want to use the water, you want to use air, there you go, bigger cooler.
So that's very convenient if you want to be overclocking but on air versus water.
Let me show what else can you get in the box.
Oh, how nice of them to include a few zip ties. That never hurts.
Your Asus Q connectors, for your front panel.
These are really convenient. You just plug everything in here, it's ready to go.
And then you plug one big... little plastic thing...
Into the board so you don't have to do each one individually.
You get a fan. This is for your, after market, your bigger cooler.
Pretty much snaps right on, very quiet, and help cools with air. Again.
You get all your fittings for your watercooling. So no problem. You have 0.5" and 0.375".
Both are on there as well as instructions, post clamps.
Pretty much everything you're gonna need to set up the watercooling on that North bridge chip set.
You get these temperature monitors which actually can be hooked into the board.
This is really cool because it will display in your BIOS,
it will display in your operating system.
And it can pretty much monitor anything you want.
This board has something called component overheat protection. Which is actually fantastic.
It's one of the overclocking features, and what it does,
it will shut down anything that's that's overheating.
So, even if it's a video card, which you can fry by overclocking too far or if a fan dies,
it will turn off the system to protect those and you can use these,
as well as the native temperature thermometers inside the case.
Here's your LCD poster, which you can use with the TweakIt buttons on the bottom
to overclock on the fly. And you also get another fantastic illuminated input output shield.
Which I love. Not only is it painted and padded on the back to keep it quiet, but its illuminated.
All the white part on here will light up.
So if you're, nighttime trying to plug something in, you're not gonna have a problem.
You also get extra little brackets here. So pretty much if you want to add extra USBs, you can.
There's also a firewire on that bracket.
And of course when you get a motherboard like this, it's gonna come with everything you need.
So, pretty much you get SATA cables. you get 3 SATA cables.
As well as one of these SATA to Molex converter.
In case you have an old power supply and you wanna use those.
And, let's see what else we got. IDE and floppy cables.
I'm as stumped as you are.
And a very, very complex and detailed and through manual which is excellent, excellent, excellent.
And you also get a driver disk in here somewhere. There it is.
Driver disk. With the latest drivers. Oh, get this too. This is really cool.
3DMark06. In the box. With a key, which I'm gonna hide with my fingers
so you guys don't steal my key, because this is mine now.
And, that's very cool. So you can go straight to benchmarking.
Figure out if your overclocking is actually producing results,
or if you're just producing heat and wasting your time.
So that's really cool. Let me go... pretty much got all the specs and stuff.
I'm just trying to go over a couple of the features that Asus has.
Take a look at this specifications list on this thing.
It's like, it's just super, super long.
So, take a look at some of the stuff we have.
LCD poster, you already saw, tells your era code, as well as let's you overclock with TweakIt.
You get the onboard switches, you get the illuminated input and output shield.
The EPU 6 engine. Which is the power management engine.
It's just like all the other new Asus port. Like the P45 boards and the Striker 2 Extreme.
It's gonna throttle everything down. It has AI Nap. Or AL Nap.
Which let's you put the computer to sleep instantly.
And keep all your stuff loaded. It let's you come back from sleep very quickly. You get Fan Xpert.
Which helps you control and throttle all your fans through the operating system or through the BIOS.
You get EZ-Flash 2. Which let's you flash the BIOS with a thumb drive.
That's very convenient. Rather than having to pull out a floppy or go through some crazy...
I don't know. Whatever you do to flash BIOSes If you're old. and you don't have this board.
What else do you get? Crash ripped BIOS. You got 2 BIOS chips.
So if you crash one or you corrupt one, The other one is ready to go.
MyLogo is gonna let you bring up a logo when you start up the computer.
Instead of having the post screens you're just gonna have a logo.
So if you've see "Hackers" and you wanna be like "Crash and Burn", go for it.
Put whatever you want there. What else?
Ok, so those are all the special features. Now let's talk about overclocking features.
We talked about the fusion block. Passive, air, or water, it's your choice.
16- phase power on the CPU. Yes 16- phase. It's crazy.
You also get 3 phases for the North bridge, 2 phases for the memory.
So that's gonna really help you bring out that whole package of overclocking features
to really get you to that bleeding edge.
If you're doing LN2 and if you're using 4870X2 or 4870's and you wanna use massive overclockers,
and you're trying to get the biggest numbers, all that stuff is gonna really help you.
You get CPU and memory level up which is like semi-automatic overclocking.
Let's say you have Q6600, you wanna take it to Q6700 specs,
It's got an automatic kinda set up there.
It will figure out the voltages and the front side Buses,
so you don't have to worry about doing it manually.
The component overheat protection is great, again.
You can do that to save the hard drive,
you can use it to save a video card. Anything that might get hot and damage itself.
It will turn off the computer. You can pre-program what level you want it to cut off on.
The Volt minder LEDs. You can't really see them. But anything you can adjust voltage on,
whether it'll be the dims over here or the CPU front side bus up here,
has this little LEDs on the side. And they will light up green, yellow, or red,
depending on how high your Voltages are.
So, if you left it at 1.4 on your 45NM for over clocking and you wanna bring it back down to 1.3,
you're are gonna see it there, it's lit up, and it is red.
You need to drop down and that's really cool.
And then, you also get CPU Parameter Recall.
So when you overclock too far, it realizes that. Your not gonna flash the CMOS.
It's gonna pretty much figure it out, set it back to default settings and then let you retry
to set up your overclock one more time.
And then the last thing is Loadline Calibration.
Which is like V-drew, pretty much V-drew control.
It will pretty much keep your voltages rock solid steady no matter what's going on.
If you're going from idle to load, it's not gonna drop you down.
It's gonna take you right to the volts you're prescribing it, and it's gonna keep it right there
Take a look at the SupremeFX. It's pretty much a creative card.
For a part of their Xfies series. And it is pretty nice looking.
And actually if you'll notice here it has a little, there you go.
That lights up from behind so you can see it. Which is kinda cool.
And it's PCI express x1. Which goes in that black slot that I told about earlier.
And it is a 7.1 channel card. It does have S/PDIF.
Right up here. Both analog and digital versions.
This is the optical, this is the coaxial. And then it has 7.1 channel audio.
And it also has headers, inside for S/PDIF. For any reason you wanna hook those up.
You very well can.
That's a lot of stuff. And that's a lot of stuff to talk about. My brain is done.
The Rampage Extreme. Ladies and Gentlemen.
I got alot of stuff behind it so I'm not gonna move the box but....
It's a hot board and if you're in the market for extreme overclocking,
you wanna overclock a quad core.
Like, if it was a P45 and you wanna overclock with big video games, big gaming cards, sorry.
And you wanna water cool everything, this is definitely the board for you.
If you have any questions on it, feel free to E-mail me right here.
And that's it, I'm out. Let me go play with this thing.
The Asus Rampage Extreme x48 Motherboard is available from the retailers listed bellow.
Or, if you want more information you can type in A445-2846 into any major search engine.
For computertv, I'm Albert.
. . . . . . . . . . . . Captions by www.SubPLY.com