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Asus are using a colourful red UEFI interface for the Rampage IV Extreme, which is just as impressive as the one incorporated with the Asus P9X79 Deluxe reviewed in a separate article today. We received several updates for the motherboard during our review and had to recheck some of the results.
The advanced panel is well configured and is intuitive to get around. The monitor panel is self explanatory and allows for analysis of temperatures and voltage settings.
The Rampage IV Extreme has several settings for automatic overclocked settings including one with a higher voltage setting. The ‘normal' OC profile overclocks the processor to 4375mhz with a slight voltage increase. The ‘extreme' OC profile attempts an overclock to almost 5ghz. We would recommend manual overclocking, ignoring these settings.
There are a wide array of voltage settings at the bottom of this panel, and these are supplemented with the Digi Power options in a dedicated section of the bios.
The memory settings can be manually adjusted, and we had good success in this panel, when paired up with the Corsair Dominator GT memory, tuning the timings manually to 10-12-10-30 @ 2400mhz. Additionally, we increased the voltage to 1.65V.
The latest version of the Rampage IV Extreme bios, released a few days before launch correctly configured our Corsair 2,400mhz memory via the XMP profile.
We managed to get the system booting at 5ghz with some tweaking, although as with the P9X79 Deluxe board, it required around 1.5 volts+ which resulted in very high load temperatures, not a realistic long term situation.
Interestingly, our Core i7 3960X EE sample was stable at 4.7ghz with only 1.41 volts and many of the settings on automatic. We only had one sample at hand so are unable to compare against others. We are sure that 5.0ghz and higher is possible 24/7, with better, more expensive cooling.
System validation at 4.8ghz is available here.
System validation at 4.9ghz is available here.
Great mobo ! but ouch on price (although expected for ROG).
That motherboard is friggin hardcore. 2400mhz memory?! awesome. probably cost £500 in the UK if they ever bring it out here however!
50GB of bandwidth with that Corsair GTX8 memory? I wet myself.
What beautiful memory too, stole the show for me today, never mind the 3960X… (which is good too I guess :p)
Great article, I would have liked to see the temperatures of that 2400mhz memory. I would say the oversized heatspreaders arent there for just show.
I cant believe the result of 50 GB/s of bandwidth with it, thats off the chart.
Great review, as always. One thing though, in the future will this CPU be used to bench new cards? Cause i think for gaming, from the small data i see in the review, it’s not the best performance/$ nor will it be affordable to 99% of gamers out there which would rather spend the cash on video cards.
No, I don’t think we will use it much for ‘general’ reviews in coming months. probably a 2600k system for those.
That Corsair memory is mindblowing. look at the design ! spectacular!
For video editing and 3d work, this is stunning. for the f irst time ive seen how high spec memory can make a difference. 2,400mhz is amazing, but can it overclock more?
Hey man, if you ever want a home for that 590 GTX QUAD SLI system, let me know.
almost 1kw from the socket. lol.
/jealous .
over 63k with 3dmark vantage? I seriously need a system upgrade, about to cry 🙁
Its a great setup, but its not mainstream or even for most enthusiast users. the price of the CPU alone means you could get a decent system, but in regards to technology its a bad sign for AMD, they are so far behind now its not even funny
Seems overkill for most users, if I played games at night and encoding video during the day, sure. but its a 2600k for me im afraid.
I love asus products. I bought one of their rampage boards a few years ago and its still working perfectly at a mad OC level.
LN2 switch is cool, wonder how many people at home would use thaT? any benefits for an ordinary user when ocing or just LN2?
Great review guys. love those high res images for board detail.
I am buying this setup when it is available. thanks for details. going to cost me 3k or so but I already have two GTX590s 🙂
I really do want to get hold of some of that memory from Corsair, that is insanely good.
How about WEI score? Can i7-3960x reach perfect 7.9? I have read many reviews that there is no processor that reach it without extreme overclocking.
Wei , the windows experience index?
Yes 7.9.
Anyone notice that Asus did not make the Rampage IV extreme with bluetooth V3.0… they are using the old 2.1 version, likely to continue the sells of they’re current Rampage III Black Edition.
Guess, they want me to wait until they come out with another black edition only for the Rampage IV?
Yeah thats weird, why would they do that?
Wow, this is cool, Intel Core i7-3960x EE is the first desktop processor capable of reaching the WEI (Windows Experience Index) perfect 7.9 at stock speed (3.30 GHz).
For the other components that have reached 7.9: DDR3 memory > 12 GB, HD 6970 or GTX 580 or faster, 200 GB or higher SATA 6 Gbps SSD.