# ASUS Rampage II Extreme LGA 1366 Motherboard in Pretty Pixels



## malware (Sep 30, 2008)

After yesterday's ASUS P6T Deluxe quick introduction, today is time for the heavy artilery to come by and stop at our front door. For sure ASUS, one of the biggest brands in the computer industry is not going to have only one or two motherboards to support Nehalem. Although the platform is not yet officially introduced, ASUS is ready with its Rampage II Extreme motherboard. As the name suggests this will be the enthusiast range of motherboard offerings support for LGA 1366 processors, triple-channel DDR3 memory and up to three PCI-Express x16 graphics cards. The new Republic of Gamers machinery might not have a fancy heat pipe cooling (it might not need one) but it has a few other tricks, such as a special VTT CPU power card that provides a 16-phase CPU and 3-phase memory power design. The board also features a number of strange buttons that will help experts overclock their hardware. The Rampage II Extreme also has six SATA 3.0 Gbps connectors, dual Gigabit Ethernets, FireWire, eSATA ports and most likely support for both ATI CrossFire X and NVIDIA triple SLI technology. Let the pictures finish this post:



 

 

 



*View at TechPowerUp Main Site*


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## Wile E (Sep 30, 2008)

Those look like voltage read points in front of the buttons. If so, that is a sweet feature to have for hardcore tweakers.


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## Jansku07 (Sep 30, 2008)

According to the original article the price will be about 400 euros. Thats A LOT.


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## Lu(ky (Sep 30, 2008)

Mongo want that board, Mongo hungry for speed..


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## CStylen (Sep 30, 2008)

Now I'm officially angry I bought the Rampage Extreme lol.  I thought it would be at least a year before the RE II would be out or even hear anything about it...at least I enjoyed 2 weeks.


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## InnocentCriminal (Sep 30, 2008)

Crapass!

>.<

Why can't the blue bits be red! 

>.<

Aesthetics aside, this board seems to offer some fantastic features such as support for either Crossfire or SLi, the on-board power/rest et al buttons. If this board out-performs the other X58 based boards then I think I have a winner, even if it doesn't match my initial colour scheme. 

Once the numbers have come in (HURRY IT UP DAMNIT!) and the boards have had time to mature, this could be the board to compare others to. 

MUHAHAHAHA!


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## Bjorn_Of_Iceland (Sep 30, 2008)

hmm les see.. a chipset designed for a new architecture.. an immature bios.. an overpriced PCB.. Popcorn mode for me.


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## InnocentCriminal (Sep 30, 2008)

Bjorn_Of_Iceland said:


> hmm les see.. a chipset designed for a new architecture.. an immature bios.. an overpriced PCB.. Popcorn mode for me.



That's it! See, I've never been an early adopter as it makes common sense not to jump on the bandwagon unless it's a damn solid product on lunch, which rarely happens and even if I wanted to, I couldn't as I've always been poor.


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## Fitseries3 (Sep 30, 2008)

WTF.... we have got used to seeing flashy boards from asus and finally began to like them and now they go back to what amounts to a stock intel cooling system? wheres the fancy ROG heatpipes and such? please tell me this is just a prototype and the final board will look better than this.


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## Octavean (Sep 30, 2008)

Yesssss

Me preciousssss

We Wantsssss it!

***edit***

What is that small raised daughter board for between the I/O and chipset heat sink for?  You know just above the first (black) PCIe X1 slot?


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## InnocentCriminal (Sep 30, 2008)

Octavean said:


> What is that small raised daughter board for between the I/O and chipset heat sink for?  You know just above the first (black) PCIe X1 slot?



Malware stated... 


> ... special VTT CPU power card that provides a 16-phase CPU and 3-phase memory power design.



... hope that answers your question.


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## btarunr (Sep 30, 2008)

fitseries3 said:


> wheres the fancy ROG heatpipes and such? please tell me this is just a prototype and the final board will look better than this.



That board is a prototype without the cooling system the actual board whould ship with. This is usually how they allow their boards to be pictured way before release. IIRC MSI and Gigabyte both had the earliest pics of their 1337 boards taken without the groovy cooling. Look at the naked southbridge with TIM on it. Does it tell you something?


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## Octavean (Sep 30, 2008)

I guess it does thanks.

The ASUS P6T Deluxe has 16 + 2 Phase power (I think) but no such power card. I’m wondering what the real world benefits of having it would be with respect to not having it.


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## Morgoth (Sep 30, 2008)

looks good


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## twicksisted (Sep 30, 2008)

that is sick 
i want!!!


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## Animalpak (Sep 30, 2008)

Very impressive i would see if Zalman, CoolerMaster, Schyte, Noctua and Thermalright are ready with new 1366 CPU Coolers.


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## X1REME (Sep 30, 2008)

Agreed it looks nice and the earlier model was good too (feature wise), but i think we need to wait and see what's so different about this one compared to the earlier one (minus i7 cpu, mem etc) for e.g. BIOS which is the most important in my opinion and not the flashy push buttons that you see and the price someone mentioned is crazy for the couple of easy push buttons feature. although it does look as if it has a voltage increase and decrease button, which would be cool if true depending on which I/O or component its for (more voltage buttons would be nice). I suppose we need to see some excellent motherboards before we commit to the bigger picture Bcoz other components will also be near the same as the motherboard in price wise.

price is the biggest factor for me as i just built 2 systems not soo long ago, especially with an uncertain future.

as someone said never be among the first adopters as they usually improve upon the motherboard/components/price/bios within a month or so.


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## mrw1986 (Sep 30, 2008)

I want this...with heatpipes that look like a rollercoaster. Then I will buy it.


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## tkpenalty (Oct 1, 2008)

mrw1986 said:


> I want this...with heatpipes that look like a rollercoaster. Then I will buy it.



Heatpipes like a rollercoaster = poor engineerng >_>...


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## Hayder_Master (Oct 1, 2008)

tkpenalty said:


> Heatpipes like a rollercoaster = poor engineerng >_>...



agree


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## Bjorn_Of_Iceland (Oct 1, 2008)

> Heatpipes like a rollercoaster = poor engineerng >_>...


+1


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## Duffman (Oct 1, 2008)

fitseries3 said:


> WTF.... we have got used to seeing flashy boards from asus and finally began to like them and now they go back to what amounts to a stock intel cooling system? wheres the fancy ROG heatpipes and such? please tell me this is just a prototype and the final board will look better than this.



It's gotta be.  You can see there isn't even a cooler in the SB and the Thermal paste is there as if it had just been removed.


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## DanishDevil (Oct 1, 2008)

mrw1986 said:


> I want this...with heatpipes that look like a rollercoaster. Then I will buy it.



+1


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## KBD (Oct 1, 2008)

Jansku07 said:


> According to the original article the price will be about 400 euros. Thats A LOT.



What? isnt that like $750? If so that is completely insane! :shadedshu


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## InnocentCriminal (Oct 2, 2008)

Nah man, it's more like $550 I would have thought. Still a lot of money.


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## KBD (Oct 2, 2008)

thats still outrageous! never did i see a mobo cost so much. this is why there has to be some competition and products from other chipset makers.


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