Saturday, January 9th 2010
ASUS Rampage III Extreme Smiles for the Camera
One of ASUS' premier offers for this year's Consumer Electronics Show (CES) event is a new high-end socket LGA-1366 motherboard, the Republic of Gamers (ROG) Rampage III Extreme. The board succeeds the Rampage II Extreme which launched over an year ago along with Intel's then new Core i7 series processors. The new model based on the Intel X58 Express + ICH10R chipset, comes with four well spaced out PCI-Express 2.0 x16 slots, a new set of overclocking enhancements such as the ROG connect which lets you control the motherboard's overclocking from any Bluetooth and Java enabled mobile phone, SATA 6 Gb/s and USB 3.0 connectivity using ASUS' innovative PCI-Express 2.0 bridge implementation, and a more powerful CPU VRM to keep the board stable with bleeding-edge settings.
The board features an enhanced CPU VRM which is now powered by two 8-pin ATX connectors apart from two 4-pin Molex connectors. Some of these could be redundant and needed only for electrical stability. The CPU and memory power circuitry makes use of super-ML capacitors for cleaner power delivery. Voltage readouts are located next to the DIMM slots for accessibility. The motherboard makes use of slimmer component heatsinks that look to be made of the ceramic composite which the TUF Sabertooth P55 motherboard uses.
Expansion slots include four PCI-Express 2.0 x16 (electrical x16, NC, x16, NC; or x8, x8, x8, x8) depending on how they are populated, and one each of PCI-Express 2.0 x4 and PCI. A PLX ExpressLane PEX 8613 bridge chip is used to give out up to 12 PCI-Express 2.0 lanes (using three ports) connecting to the southbridge using its PCI-Express 1.1 x4 link, so that any PCI-E 2.0 device can make use of that amount of bandwidth. Devices connected to it include a Marvell 2-port SATA 6 Gb/s controller, and an NEC 2-port USB 3.0 controller. Connectivity includes 8-channel audio with optical SPDIF output, gigabit Ethernet, Bluetooth, eSATA, USB 2.0 and 3.0. The Rampage III Extreme should come out in Q1, just in time for Intel's 32 nm Core i7 980X six-core processor based on the Westmere architecture.
Source:
Tom's Hardware
The board features an enhanced CPU VRM which is now powered by two 8-pin ATX connectors apart from two 4-pin Molex connectors. Some of these could be redundant and needed only for electrical stability. The CPU and memory power circuitry makes use of super-ML capacitors for cleaner power delivery. Voltage readouts are located next to the DIMM slots for accessibility. The motherboard makes use of slimmer component heatsinks that look to be made of the ceramic composite which the TUF Sabertooth P55 motherboard uses.
105 Comments on ASUS Rampage III Extreme Smiles for the Camera
Glad to see they have 775 mounting holes and 1336, MORE boards need to do this.
Infact no idea why intel bothered to make the mounting holes different on 1336 in the first place.
think of this...
take a nail and push it into the ground with 1000pounds of pressure. what happens?
now take a 3inch round cylinder and do the same.
the smaller one sinks right into the ground but the larger one spreads pressure evenly.
idk if i explained that properly but you may get what im saying.
Also from your explanation the wider hole spacing would apply less pressure to a single point, which is what you don't want, you want a lot of pressure just on the CPU, which makes the closest holes the optimal choice, means you have more room for components.
I tested both sets on the blooodrage before I killed it, on my 3503 it made no difference in idle or load.
Any one willing to test this out on their board with 2 sets of mount holes?
Make sense now guys?
Also, the amount of supplementary chips on this board is ridiculous. I counted 13 in the lower half, not including the BIOS chips, the chipset and the 10 PCIe switches and whatever else I missed.
I can see this being useful like when doing 3d benching
Unless they plan on running 5 volts through a cpu at once.
I really hope the 4 pin Molex connector dies.
:shadedshu
I had a 939 board that had the same, only with 1 of each, not 2 of each.
everything needs to switch to sata power connectors
Contrary to some reports on the internet, it doesn't look like there's an nForce 200 chip to me. There are two sets of external PCI-E lane switches.
This is not gimmicky because all it takes for the manufacturer is to add a Bluetooth module and necessary hardware, and give you a Java app for your phone. So unlike OC Palm which shot the price of the P6T Deluxe by $50+ or the EVBot (which costs like $75), this isn't coming at a premium. If your phone has Bluetooth and can run Opera Mini (which is a Java app), then it can run the ROG Connect app.
I have a Rampage II Extreme, no plans to upgrade but man that's a nice board. The low profile heatsinks are very sexy.