ASUS Rampage III Extreme Crossfire SLI Gaming Motherboard Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2011-05-08
·
2,138 words · ~10 min read
0:00
the Rampage 3 Extreme is probably the motherboard I've received more requests
0:05
for an unboxing for than any other board in the history of my channel so let's
0:10
start with the actual uh motherboard itself the basic features it is a
0:14
rampage series board so that means it is part of their highest tier of
0:17
motherboards even within the Republic of Gamers brand so it's a 1366 motherboard
0:22
it supports LGA 1366 of course including
0:26
Intel's latest six core processors so you got support for all Cor 7 Extreme as
0:31
well as all core i7 1366 CPUs you've got
0:35
support for SLI and Crossfire up to threeway but that gets a little bit more
0:39
complicated and I'll tell you more once we get the board opened up the box is
0:43
huge and comes with a window so you can
0:47
see the motherboard on the store shelf you can see they've got uh we'll talk
0:50
more about the board after so basic features you've got their Rog connect so
0:54
you can plug the motherboard into another computer and overclock with the
0:57
other computer you've got Extreme Engine dig plus so that means you've got
1:01
digital pwm USB BIOS flashback more on
1:04
that in a little bit and it also includes some bundled software 3D Mark
1:08
Vantage and kasperski antivirus now this motherboard actually introduces besides
1:13
that USB BIOS flash feature two pretty
1:18
unique ways to flash the BIOS so one is
1:21
just by loading the BIOS onto a USB stick plugging it into the back of the
1:25
motherboard and then it just automatically flashes and then the other
1:29
is the two separate BIOS chips which can be flashed with two different settings
1:34
or they can be set with two different settings and you can Flash from one to
1:38
the other in order to actually maintain two completely different overclocking
1:41
profiles like you could have one for 24/7 and then one for whenever you're
1:46
you're doing some extreme benching or whatever and then you can automatically go back to your old one you got a
1:50
three-way SLI Bridge included you've also got a h oh I think this is that
1:55
little Bluetooth thing yeah this is a uh a Bluetooth module so comes with
2:00
Bluetooth that's pretty cool then you've got whatever is in here which I will
2:05
find out what it is for you okay we got
2:08
a couple screws and then we got some uh
2:11
Bubbles and then we got a little fan okay well we'll have to find out what
2:16
that hooks up to you can see it's like an anodized red heat sink so that's
2:20
probably what the heat sink on the motherboard's Finish is going to look like they've actually applied a proper
2:25
thermal compound and a reasonable amount of it I'm really impressed to see that
2:29
most mother man motherboard manufacturers don't get that
2:32
detail IO bracket with two USB and one eSATA then we've got 1 two 3 4 5
2:39
six 7 eight SATA cables uh four our
2:43
right angle four our straight we've got the Rog connect USB cable then we've got
2:48
an IO Shield we've got some zip ties
2:51
we've got there oh this is good prob belt that's another feature it includes
2:54
so you've got little uh leads that you can plug into all of the voltage
2:58
monitoring points on the motherboard board to make it easier to plug in your
3:01
multimeter you've got their Q connector uh one crossfire bridge and then one
3:06
long SLI Bridge we've got some temperature sensors and last but not
3:12
least we have the Rampage Extreme users guide with some labels for the SATA
3:17
cables as well as uh the drivers and
3:20
installation utilities DVD don't use that download the latest off D website
3:24
then we have a republic of Gamers sticker so let's get all that back in
3:29
there and let's get the motherboard out so one thing that stands out to me
3:34
right away about this motherboard is while EVGA and uh Gigabyte are tripping
3:40
over themselves and each other to release motherboards that are not a
3:45
standard ATX form factor ASUS has opted
3:48
to stick with the ATX uh
3:52
design for this particular board you can see they've gone a little bit wider so
3:57
it's more like an extended ATX than a standard ATX but they keep the standard
4:02
Seven slots rather than making the board longer at the bottom and I really like
4:06
this for a number of reasons the first of all the first of which is that it
4:11
means it can fit in many more cases than these these non-standard boards it also
4:17
if they put the engineering work into it and you can see that they have they've
4:20
got the first PCI Express slot right at the top it means there's a lot of
4:24
components packed in there but even with this standard ATX board you still get
4:28
all the benefits of up to four-way Crossfire or four-way SLI these slots
4:34
will run at 8X 8X 8X 8X and if you have
4:38
a case like the Corsair obsidian 800d that doesn't have an eighth slot but
4:43
does have a vented port at the back you can actually install a dual slot card in
4:47
here so you'll go two two two and two so
4:51
you can use a standard ATX board to get that extreme feature as long as you put
4:55
the engineering work into it which isus has why don't we start with the c or
5:00
rather move on to the CPU socket so it's a standard 1366 socket there's not much
5:05
to say about it but they have included holes for 1366 as well as what appears
5:10
to be 775 so if you have an old cooler and a lot of the extreme overclocking
5:15
guys with their liquid nitrogen pots won't have newer hard mounting hardware
5:19
you can definitely use that to mount it there over here we have got two 8 Pin
5:24
CPU connectors so that means that this through its digital pwm is able to pump
5:30
a lot of juice into your processor you've got to be going pretty far over
5:33
stock speeds for that to be a benefit but hey that's what this board is for uh
5:38
we've got the clear seos buttton right here as well as one here so you've got
5:42
one on the top of the board if you're using it on an Open Bench as well as one
5:46
on the back panel very convenient thank you assus for that then we've got our
5:51
support for up to uh six dims so that's
5:54
triple Channel memory we have our onboard switches there's our start and
5:58
reset and then we have have oh boy okay
6:01
well I wish I knew what those do but uh please leave a comment if you know what
6:04
these do they are onoff switches right here they are labeled switch one to
6:08
switch four very cool okay oh this is interesting there's a liquid nitrogen
6:13
mode up here and it appears to be the jumper right here so they've actually
6:17
got a special liquid nitrogen profile for this board and I'm guessing what it
6:21
does is it controls the uh the timing of the electrical signals for if the board
6:25
is going to be really really cold okay here we've got our 24 pin connector in
6:30
its ideal location and then we move down and we see our SATA connector so we have
6:36
two SATA 6 gbit per second connectors here and rather yeah two SATA 6 gbit per
6:42
second and then six SATA 2 so SATA 3 GB
6:45
per second connectors here then we have the uh BIOS
6:50
switch right here we have one more SATA connector then we have our front panel
6:55
connectors here are the two BIOS chips
6:58
so all you have to do this is so cool is press the button and then you'll
7:02
actually load one BIOS profile or the other one here's the plugin for their OC
7:06
station which is a dual 5 and 1/4 in Bay device that you can plug into the front
7:10
of your case for some Hardware overclocking next we've got and I like
7:14
this this motherboard has all four pin pwm fan connectors no Legacy thre pin
7:20
fan connectors and it has a ton of them 1 two three let me see let's just keep
7:25
counting here I got four I've got five
7:30
six seven seven fan connectors so you can load a ton of fans on here that's
7:35
pretty cool next we have a Molex connector at the bottom so this is to
7:39
provide additional power there's actually two of them and I'm glad to see
7:43
this one in a very sensible location here because usually you see a lot of
7:47
bottom mounted power supplies these days and then there's one more up here so
7:50
that's going to give you additional juice for your graphics cards if you're running four high powered cards in here
7:55
let me see what else we've got there's your front panel audio connector as well
7:59
as your BIOS uh battery and last but not
8:02
least we've actually got one more clear seimos jumper so you can do it the
8:06
oldfashioned jumper way or you can hit either of the two switches up at the top
8:10
of the board now let's have a look at the cooling solution now the x58 chipset
8:14
as well as the ic10 r Southbridge they
8:17
don't really run that hot it's not really necessary to throw a whole ton of
8:22
cooling at them but if you yeah you know what that's basically
8:27
it if you want to ASUS has included an
8:30
extra heat sink which you can see straps in right where this this piece comes off
8:36
so you can leave it passive because you don't need all that cooling or you can
8:40
throw an additional one on here and you can get that addition additional cooling
8:45
if you want it if you're going to be pushing it even harder so that's uh you
8:49
know what the spacing actually looks right for Swift Tech's water block that
8:53
can mount here as well so it looks like Aus has continued their tradition with
8:57
their high-end Republic of Gamers Boards of allowing them to be water cooled with
9:01
a third party piece that's pretty neat as well and the cameraman is probably
9:05
having a look at the like black angular heat sink I really like their new style
9:09
and their Republic of Gamers boards have been typically black and red they've
9:12
done an exceptional job of making this board look like something you'd really
9:16
want to put on display in a windowed case so why don't we have a look at the
9:20
oh yeah let's have a look at the back of the board look at that so they've got the standard back plate for the CPU
9:24
socket but they've also got uh a cooling heat spreader for the back of the pwm so
9:29
that's something you see on the back of boards from time to time but not really
9:33
all that often last but not least let's
9:36
have a look at the I/O connectivity at the back so we got a PS2 keyboard Port
9:41
we've got 1 2 3 4 5 six USB 2.0 ports
9:44
this is not a true USB port that is the Rog connect Port so that can be used to
9:49
flash the BIOS in that Innovative new way you plug in the USB with the BIOS on
9:53
it you hold this for 2 seconds and it flashes awesome next we have a clear
9:57
Simo switch here Optical audio out eat
10:00
fire wire gigabit Ethernet this is you know what this is one of those things
10:04
again I have to comment on I'm so sick of seeing gaming motherboards with like
10:08
two or I've seen up to four Ethernet connections on the back why Gamers need
10:12
one fast Ethernet connection that's all so that's uh yeah just random rant then
10:18
we have two USB 3.0 ports as well as 7.1
10:22
audio thank you for checking out my unboxing and product overview of the
10:27
much awaited ASUS Rampage 3
10:32
extremee