Wednesday, February 11th 2009
ASUS Developing ROG Series mATX Motherboard
The premium motherboard market's newfound love for the micro-ATX form-factor has been dutifully addressed by companies such as DFI, by releasing the LANParty Jr series, featuring high-end chipsets and almost complete feature-sets that rival full-sized ATX motherboards. ASUS has now decided to put its Republic of Gamers (ROG) series on the prowl with its first high-end mATX motherboard: Rampage II Gene.
As the name suggests, the motherboard supports Intel Core i7 series processors, and is based on the Intel X58 chipset. ASUS keeps the segment of buyers in mind that builds light-weight, yet full-featured LAN party machines. The Rampage II Gene features an 8-phase CPU power circuit. It features six DDR3 DIMM slots for to support up to 24GB of triple-channel DDR3 memory. It holds two full-length PCI-Express 2.0 x16 slots plus a PCI-Express x4 open-ended slot. Both ATI CrossFireX and NVIDIA Quad-SLI are supported. The ICH10R southbridge provides six SATA II channels with RAID support. Also provided is an onboard SupremeFX X-Fi sound system that provides support for most of Creative's X-Fi sound technologies. Two gigabit Ethernet interfaces and support for the iROG - TweakIT features, that simplify overclocking, make for the rest of the package. The Rampage II Gene is expected to be priced above $200 in the US.
Source:
Bit-Tech.net
As the name suggests, the motherboard supports Intel Core i7 series processors, and is based on the Intel X58 chipset. ASUS keeps the segment of buyers in mind that builds light-weight, yet full-featured LAN party machines. The Rampage II Gene features an 8-phase CPU power circuit. It features six DDR3 DIMM slots for to support up to 24GB of triple-channel DDR3 memory. It holds two full-length PCI-Express 2.0 x16 slots plus a PCI-Express x4 open-ended slot. Both ATI CrossFireX and NVIDIA Quad-SLI are supported. The ICH10R southbridge provides six SATA II channels with RAID support. Also provided is an onboard SupremeFX X-Fi sound system that provides support for most of Creative's X-Fi sound technologies. Two gigabit Ethernet interfaces and support for the iROG - TweakIT features, that simplify overclocking, make for the rest of the package. The Rampage II Gene is expected to be priced above $200 in the US.
28 Comments on ASUS Developing ROG Series mATX Motherboard
cant wait to go i7 + ddr3 on a matx board.
my GTX295 has been living in a matx case, but my Q6600 is holding it back stuck at ~3.0ghz
I personally would go for the DFI first. I've had better luck with them compared to ASUS boards, and the Rampage II was a finicky piece. That and they've got the UV colors ;)
Looks like a nice baord, but i'm a sucker for the rampage boards asus have released so far, they all look very nice.
The price is very reasonable for an X58 chipset. Keep in mind the DFI Jr. is $230 as well.
offtopic: Besides the Bloodrage & the P6T there are any other 775 compatible mobos out there?
Jokes aside, it's pretty sad that this board only has 1 less slot than the full-size Rampage II Extreme board. Makes you wonder if it's really necessary to cover half the board with massive heatsinks... do they serve any purpose, other than to look "blingy" and/or get in the way?
but its priced out the ass, so meh. How are the onboard sound on these boards? do they got 5.1 n stuff? like xfi qual shit? i might be picking up a new board an proc and another 4870 for my LAN box, so im tryin 2 figure this out :p
Oh and BTW, the centurion 540 (www.techpowerup.com/reviews/CoolerMaster/Centurion540) has really decent cooling, my 4870 and q6600 run like idle 30 apeice and load out at like 38deg on the proc and 45 on the card, so yeah i think you can keep shit cool in a matx rig, with enuf airflow.
Why are people complaining about the price?!? It is perfectly in line with the other X58 boards. You can't honestly expect it cost as much as a P45! The X58 chipset is a high-end chipset.
www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131352
Given that the Rampage II Extreme is priced at like $400, I wouldn't be surprised if this board cost at least $250, if not more, and higher than DFI's similar offering at $230 with the Lanparty Jr. X58-T3H6:
www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813136066
As far as features differences between the two motherboards go:
- the specs for this board state 8 phase power whereas DFI's has 6 phase. does anyone know if this really makes a difference?
- possibly better onboard sound with the X-Fi?? it is being reported that it is software driven/emulated though
- DFI has both Coax and Optical SPDIF out, this has Optical only
- additional mounting holes for a Socket 775 heatsink?? (DFI does not have this)
- 2 x 1394a Firewire ports (one on rear I/O, one via onboard header) - DFI has none
- Seven SATA ports, as opposed to 6 on the DFI
- one rear eSATA port (DFI has none)
- 5 fan headers, as opposed to 6 on the DFI
- concerning the fan headers, all of them appear to be 4-pin PWM as opposed to only the CPU fan header on the DFI
- no floppy connector port (DFI has one)
- single PS/2 port for keyboard only (DFI has both keyboard and mouse)
"software driven X-Fi sound from ADI"
www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2009/02/10/asus-matx-republic-of-gamers-gene-series/1