WEBVTT

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So today we're going to be having a look at the Rampage 3 formula motherboard

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this is from ausa's Republic of Gamers line but you can tell from the suffix

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formula that it's actually a value member of the Republic of Gamers line

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which may seem like a it's a little bit counterintuitive but it is so the

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Rampage 3 Extreme is the fully featured board and the Rampage 3 formula is kind

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of like a little brother so this is a core i7 motherboard that means it has

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supp for all the latest LGA 1366 CPUs

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that means you got support for six cores quad cores and that's pretty much all

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you have on 1366 because it is an Enthusiast platform core i7 extreme core

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i7 you've got support for SLI as well as hi Crossfire X so let's have a look at

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the Box itself you can see a handy little window where you've got three PCI

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Express 16x slots but we'll talk more about the board in a minute let's talk

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about a couple of the key features so you've got Rog connect which is a USB

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interface for plugging in an a different computer to actually uh control BIOS

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options on this particular board You've Got Game first technology which is a lan

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feature that it has in order to give you the the speed you need to pone awesome I

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love it as well as to uh give your games priority access to any land functions

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you've got BIOS flashback so you have two BIOS ROMs which you can actually

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choose which one you want to boot from as well as Supreme FX x52 builtin so

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that's a creative uh solution for your on onboard sound Extreme Engine Digi

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plus is a powerful combination of analog and digital design elements as well as

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an included copy of casers skki antivirus on the back in typical Rog

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fashion it has exactly the same stuff except for uh oh it also mentions

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three-way SLI and Crossfire X so that's uh that's a good thing I suppose it has

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one additional feature listed on the back that is not already listed on the

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front so let's have a look at the accessory package which as you might

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expect with an Rog board is quite complete you got a three-way SLI Bridge

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you have an IO shield with their uh spongy backing on it you also have some

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zip ties for cable management you have a crossfire Bridge a nice long flexible

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SLI Bridge you've got your Q connectors for easy plugging in of the front USB as

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well as the front panel connectors a users guide

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including a republic of gamer sticker as

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well as a support DVD which you should throw away and download the latest from

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the ASUS website you have an optional fan as well as an installation guide for

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it so that's only if you're using water cooling or a passive or very low air

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flow cooler you've got an EA bracket as well as USB 2.0 there's your cable for

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Rog connect which is a standard USB a TOA male to male cable then you've

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got six SATA 2 cables two SATA 3 cables

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please note that those are identical other than the color there is no

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physical difference between a satat 2 cable and a SATA 3 cable in terms of

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data transmission I mean I guess if you had a

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really terrible quality SATA 2 cable it might not work at sat 3 speeds but I

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mean I really find that quite quite far-fetched indeed all right so let's

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get the motherboard out itself and have a look at it as always ASUS has just

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nailed the aesthetic on this particular board their Republic of Gamers boards

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have really been outstanding lately in that regard so we've got a black PCB

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with black uh nickel plated as well as red accents it looks just phenomenal so

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let's have a look at the overall layout cameraman's very interested in the pwm

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cooling here so you can see that that is connected via a couple of different heat

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pipes so the top one over here is connected via heat pipe to the bottom

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one so you can see those two are sharing their load a little bit and then you

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have a heat pipe connecting the uh the left pwm cooler to the North Bridge

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cooler down to oh that's a separate heat pipe itself no no it's not that's the

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same heat pipe it's flattened out and then it curves up and that connects the

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South Bridge as well so let's look at the overall board layout we'll start

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with the CPU socket so cameraman if you can come direct your attention over here

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that is an LGA 1366 socket I already mentioned the CPU support but I will say

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it again core i7 as well as core i7 extreme you've got your 8 Pin power

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connector with the optional four pin uh cover placed on it by default up here in

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the top left corner in its ideal location you've got your six RAM slots

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supporting dual dual Channel you're supporting dual sets of triple Channel

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DDR3 memory with the quick install

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memory dim slot so you can see that there are only Clips on the one side the

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other side has no clips so you're meant to insert the module this way and then

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clip it down on the one side your 24 pin connector is in its ideal location along

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the right hand edge of the board and you've also got start

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reset and all of your uh voltage

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measurement options along the top right right hand side of the board as well in

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very very conveniently located fashion

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so down here we have the Go Button we have oh q q reset up here I had actually

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missed that button and then moving down the board oh cameraman still looking at

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all the buttons oh he's waiting for it to focus I see what he's doing now okay

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so let's move down and have a look at the SATA options so we've got six SATA

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two ports remember Intel still does not have support natively for sative three

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on their chipset so it's actually a Marvel chipset right there that is

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running the SATA 3 6 GB per second Port so you do have two of those moving down

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the board we have a BIOS reset switch right here although that's far less

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conveniently located than the one that I already saw on the back panel here's

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your front panel connectors as well as you another fan connector you've got

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your dual BIOS chips right there so it's actually got two physical chips this is

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not some cheap hack two physical BIOS chips that you can switch in between

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you've got your front USB ports here as well as some more of them over here I'm

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not sure which of these are USB and which are not to be perfectly honest all

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right we've got two more fan connectors I'm going to do a quick count of the fan

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connectors before we're done here fire wire port and then let's look at the PCI

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Express layout so uh yeah there's the x52 Supreme effect cameraman's making

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his way to the PCI Express slots we start with a PCIe 1x slot up at the top

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here and then we have a PCIe 16x slot

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now please note there is an absence of a slot here the assumption is that if

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you're buying a republic of Gamers board and this is a good assumption that

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you're probably using a dual slot graphics card which you should be so you

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don't need a slot here basically all right then we've got another PCI Express

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16x slot a PCI e1x 16x and a PCI slot so

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if you're running dual card SLI or Crossfire you're going to use these two

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which means you're going to cover this one your blank you're going to cover this one in a PCI slot that will leave

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you with two PCIe 1X slots that will remain usable we've got an auxiliary

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Molex power connector here so if you are running up to three cards and then

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you'll cover almost all of your slots except this guy then you should plug

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that in because otherwise you're drawing just too much power out of the 24 pin

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connector now let's have a look at the back of the board on the io Shield we've

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got a purple PS2 Port so that's going to be keyboard only then we've got 1 2 3 4

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5 six oh is that one of those combo

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ports no it's not so we have six USB 2.0

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ports we have a powered Esa Port as well as a regular eatle port and then we have

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a clear seimo switch optical audio out the Rog connect button USB 3.0 support

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gigabit land and those look like goldplated 7.1 audio connectors and

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before we're done I did promise a count of the four pin fan connector so we have

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one two up here by the CPU socket we have another one over here on the top

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right of the board we have another one down here by the North Bridge so that is

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I don't know four and then down at the bottom of the board we find another five

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six seven totals so that means that you can actually control all of those fans

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via the BIOS and uh hold on 1 2 3 4 5 6

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7 eight eight there's one more over here by the 24 pin connector so you can

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actually control eight fans via the bio

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software and you can optimize them for performance or for silence that's a

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pretty cool feature and they all support pwm there's the back of the board in

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case you care thank you for checking out my unboxing of the Rampage 3 formula

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don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech tips