Asus Rampage IV Gene Gaming Motherboard Unboxing & Overview
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2014-05-07
·
1,652 words · ~8 min read
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the Corsair carbide air 540 High airflow Cube case is great for air cooling or
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liquid cooling check the link in the video description to learn more I would
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make the argument that the Rampage 4 Gene is still the most extreme grade
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motherboard for an matx system that is microatx it uses LGA 2011 which at the
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time of filming this only supports up to second gen Intel Core Series processor
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so that Sandy Bridge however Ivy bridgy is coming soon meaning you'll be able to
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slap a six Core Extreme Edition or non-extreme Edition Ivy Bridge so that's
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third generation core series processor onto this as well as up to 32 GB of
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memory up to two dual slot graphics
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cards in SLI or Crossfire as well as
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pretty much anything else you would want to put on it this is an
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extremely powerful little motherboard
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and the emphasis of course being on the fact that it is little it's matx I mean
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look at that the socket takes up like most of the motherboard so anyway let's
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go through the accessories first of all there's do not disturb I am gaming go
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away Republic of Gamers door hanger awesome love it there's the Rog connect
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cable so this allows you to tweak BIOS options at a hardware level using a
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secondary machine such as a notebook by plugging into the Rog connect enabled
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USB port on the back of the board we've got six SATA cables so three of them are
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right right angle and three of them are straight these are validated for SATA 2
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or SATA 3 speed operation their Q connector feature which I feel is for
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lazy people or people with very very fat fingers can be handy for that plugging
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in your front panel connectors a republic of Gamers SLI bridge that is
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optimized for the short distance in between the two PCI Express 16x slots
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and yes those my friends are full PCI
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Express 16x slots because this is LGA 2011 and for anyone who thinks that
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lga11 50 is getting more than four dim
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slots or more than PCIe 8X by 8X SLI or
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Crossfire support anytime soon no no no no no no no not without things like sort
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of weird Bridge chips and cluggy solutions like that next up we've got an
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IO Shield like padding on the back it's kind of cool a user guide the Rog
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connect guide the SATA HCI RAID Mode
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notice as well as an enormous sticker that I personally wouldn't put anywhere
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near my computer but if you really want to have a huge Rog logo on your uh
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system hi JJ just bugging um anyway that's up
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that's up to you that's up to you why don't we just leave it at that all right
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so features other than the fact that ASUS
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reserves the very best quality components for their Republic of Gamers
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class of products what do you actually get for spending so much on a
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motherboard that inherently doesn't do that much more than another
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motherboard well for one thing especially when you're trying to build a
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smaller class of system using very high quality components in the voltage
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regulation modules is incredibly important so ASUS is using 10K black
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caps that are rated for 105° C operation so that means that in a
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cramped case no matter what sort of bad stuff is going on with this system you
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are not going to be in a situation where it's going to be running out of spec and
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it's not going to last for very long so that is not what this is about you've
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also got a nice little heat pipe that connects all of the various voltage
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regulation module components that are above the socket as well as beside the
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socket using higher quality components also reduces things like coil wine so
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for example when you hear that noise when you're underload that
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can be attributed to lower quality components all right so what else do you
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get you get a better audio solution generally speaking on an ASUS R board
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than you get on almost anywhere else right here is their Redline audio
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concept so you can actually see that instead of including like they did with
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Supreme FX2 a separate PCB Riser card
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that goes into one of your PCI Express slots they have a little illuminated red
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line that separates the sound card PCB on the motherboard from the rest of the
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PCB there's an aluminum Shield as well as the fact that the sound processor is
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as far away from the other components as possible to reduce interference and that
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right there is A500 microfarad
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like massive capacitor in addition to the audio grade capacitors elsewhere
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that compensates for a couple of things so if you have like a sudden explosion
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or something like that and it's drawing more power than normal you might with a
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normal audio solution see something like uh clipping or or it because it's not
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able to deliver enough power this is designed to smooth out those things so
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better Audio Solutions are something that I personally do feel are help
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justify a more expensive board even though you could buy less expensive board and dedicated card but of course
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ASUS has Zonar cards for that you also get better PCB design so you've got your
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PCI Express 8 pin connector still in its ideal top location as well as the 24 pin
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connector in its ideal right hand location this is more difficult and it
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does take adding more layers to the PCB in order to maintain an optimal layout
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and still have it fit in a smaller form
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factor now I did mention this is a bit of an older board so the SATA ports uh
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feel a little bit dated at this point but you've got four SATA 3 6 GB per
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second ports two running off the Intel chipset two running off a third party as
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media chipset and then two say to 2 3 GB
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per second ports I probably should have mentioned that the CPU is entirely
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digitally powered so all the vrm is fully Digi I think they call it what is
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it Digi plus 2 so that means you have all the tweakability that you could
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possibly want that's another thing that you get with Rog boards that you don't get with other boards is that going to
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help you overclock better unless your name is Andre Yang possibly no but if
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you want to feel better having all the bells and whistles there's the way to do
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it actually there's another SATA 3 or SATA 2 3 GB per second connector down
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here and that's uh y say 3G and then
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we've got our front panel connectors to front USB 2 as well as onboard start
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reset and go button switches you can
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actually H there get your front audio connector and then that leads us to the
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PCI Express lot so dual PCIe 16x this
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guy right here is wired only for 8X and this one is wired for Forex so you could
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fill this up with a full complement of graphics cards and other expansion cards
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and you would get very very satisfactory
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performance indeed it supports up to DDR3 2400 MHz however you will have to
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overclock in order to achieve that and moving along to the rear AIO we've got
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eight USB 2.0 ports again this is a bit of an older board two USB 3.0 ports a
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clear seos button the Rog connect button as well as BIOS flashback functional is
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built into this board so if you do brick the board the power goes out in the
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middle of a BIOS flash you can restore it simply by following the instructions
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on the ASUS website optical digital audio out a PS2 port in Intel NYX so you
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can use that to prioritize game packets
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um using the aiite software and then 7.1
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audio out as well as an eat Port you it
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includes a copy of demon tools standards as well as kasperski antivirus and
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something that I'm sure JJ is watching this video and I'm sure was ready to
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write me an email telling me I had forgotten about I have not Supreme fx3
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in spite of the fact that I've mentioned several times now this is an older board
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is still getting updated so their new uh sound radar or whatever they call it
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basically it's a visual indicator on your screen that actually points out
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where sounds are coming from in game in real time it's basically cheating as far
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as I can tell but hey every Advantage right um has been added to Supreme
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effects 3 re boards even older ones like
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this one so you pair this up with an ivybridge E processor and a couple of
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GTX Titans and you have one powerhouse of a system in a very small form factor
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thank you for checking out my unboxing and overview of the Maximus 4 genan did
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I say maximus because I meant Rampage 4 genan sorry JJ from ASUS don't forget to
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subscribe for more unboxings reviews and other computer videos don't forget to like the video if you liked the video or
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dislike it if you don't I don't care and leave a comment under the video letting
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me know why you liked disliked it I'll read it but you know no promises I'll
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change anything but I might