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The Asus Rampage III Black Edition is fully loaded and looks great with the menacing black colour scheme.
The board is supplied with 6 DIMMs supporting up to 48GB of DDR3 memory, right up to 2,200mhz. As this is a X58 motherboard, the memory is a triple channel design.
There are eight sata ports on the board, 6 of which are SATA 3.0 GB/s, controlled by the Intel ICH10R. This offers Raid 0,1,5 and 10 support. Next to this are 2 Sata 6.0 GB/s ports (grey), handled by the Marvell 9182 PCIe controller.
Above, a board schematic which shows an overview of the connectivity and specifications. The ‘Extreme Engine Digi+' is a high performance digital VRM design which can achieve the maximum performance levels with adjustable CPU PWM frequency. It expedites heat dissipation and achieves better electric conduction keeping critical components reliable.
The board has a dedicated ‘overclocking zone' which contains a reset and start button, as well as a ‘GO' Button. You can press this before post to enable MemOK! or to quickly load the preset profile for temporary overclocking while in the operating system. There is a debug LED next to this section which displays numbers which can be referenced in the manual to help with troubleshooting. The board supports ROG Connect which allows a laptop to be used, just like a race car engineer. You connect via a USB cable and can view post code in real time on the laptop. Its not something we ever use, but we can see some people finding it useful.
Next to the reset button are four switches which let the user enable or disable the corresponding PCIe x 16 slots. This means you can easily disable a slot with a card in it for troubleshooting or testing configurations. We think this is a rather ingenious idea.
Close to the ram slots is a 3 pin jumper switch which is tagged as ‘LN2'. This ships in the disabled position, but can be enabled to help combat the cold boot bug during POST when using hardcore cooling solutions such as Liquid Nitrogen.
Onboard sound is handled by the capable Supreme FX XFi 2 processor. It features EAX 5.0 and OpenAL for ultra-real cinematic in-game audio. It comes with THX TruStudio Pro, which enhances games, music and movies. SupremeFX X-Fi 2 also implements gold-plated jacks and high quality capacitors to ensure high definition adventures in audio.
The board is fully equipped with an array of passively cooled heatsinks to keep the VRM's cool under load. They are strategically positioned so oversized CPU coolers can be used. We fitted a giant Noctua NH D14 without any trouble.
The board has several power connectors across the schematic to ensure stable performance under heavy load conditions. Under the bottom PCIe Slot is a Molex connector which is to feed extra power to the PCIe slots and graphics cards. We found it didn't really make much difference during testing, two AMD HD6990's were perfectly stable in Quad Crossfire with or without it connected. There are also two EATX12V connectors to supply a high level of power to the CPU (the removable rubber caps are over 4 pins on each connector in the image above). There is a ‘Q reset' button next to these which temporarily stops the power feed to the CPU, to help it recover from a frozen condition. Asus have also included a dual bios configuration on the board so the user can recover to another bios in case of major issues occurring.
The back panel supports the following connectivity:
- 1 x PS/2 Keyboard
- 2 x External SATA ports
- 1 x LAN(RJ45) port(s)
- 2 x USB 3.0/2.0 (Blue)
- 7 x USB 2.0/1.1 (1 port also for ROG Connect)
- 8 -Channel Audio I/O
- 1 x Clr CMOS switch
- 2 x Wi-Fi antenna jacks
- 1 x ROG Connect On/Off switch
I shall read this all later, but I skipped through some pages. thats a phenomenal looking board. all the liquid nitrogen touches etc too, very clever. Asus are tough to beat in this market.
damn, what a setup. thats a wet dream configuration that is. you reviewers are lucky SOBS 🙂
Hiya Zardon, first review of this, love it ! Any ideas on when its released? I was on scan to order it, but its not there yet ?
HI Mannie, not sure of the date tbh. I just was told the price. I would say it will be released shortly. Enjoy !
opps posted this in the wrong place. As I was saying erm.. be sure to keep looking on local stores for this, numbers will be limited and everyone wants it 🙂
perhaps im picking holes in this, but the use of a card means you lose a slot on the board. im not sure that briliant.
£400 for a motherboard. ouch, but hey if you can afford a 990x I doubt you would care.
well out of my bank balance, but good reading, cant hurt to dream
Exotic board, bit suprised they didnt put more sata 6 ports on the mobo, even 4 ?
This seems about 75 quid less than the Assassin and I cant really see why. I think the assassin has a slightly better cooling system on the pcb but apart from this its very similar in design.
Not like asus to be cheaper, even if its relative in this price bracket
Astonishing product. Asus really are such a brilliant company. Their high end stuff is just so incredible
Asus are the best, no doubt about it 😉
boards like this are the reason im a tech addict.
1% of the people reading this could afford it. (well maybe a bit higher on Kitguru).
I swore I would never change boards until the next generation, but my 980x is screaming out for this mobo. I just got a D14 heatsink so its even more tempting now …… thank god you cant buy them yet. my credit card is hiding in the drawer.
Very impressive indeed, well worth the cost
Good review , Asus do it again, shame there are only two 6 gbps sat a ports.
The bios is a great design, it’s why I always buy Asus boards. But I just went for a 2600k, these CPUs cost too much
They certainly didn’t skimp on the boards power settings. I’m tempted to pick one up for my 980x
Phenomenal, but it’s mighty expensive, even for what you get.
I actually think it’s 80 quid less than the assassin from gb. Seems better value , but it’s all mean ingress for this target Market who don’t really care that much about cost. Gigabyte assassin looks to have nicer heatsinks but i don’t like the green scheme at all
I will be ordering one, been waitin a while for it to come out now.
I don’t know why people say this is overpriced. A standard x58 is 240. This is well worth the extra 140
It makes the rampage iii 3 extreme look gay lol
I don’t think so – pair the R3E with a LynxTWO card, and this one will look like gay in black. But hey, with that audio card on board – it will cost you at least 1,700.00-1,800.00$ and I allready have one…
Nice review but two questions:
Can you confirm if the new Marvel 9182 SATA 3 supports TRIM for SSD’s? I’m asking as I know the older one that is commonly used on X58 boards (9128) does not.
As well I am curious if you got the Wi Fi going, as I have heard of few reports of it being problematic.
Thanks!