ASUS RAMPAGE IV BLACK EDITION (Intel SKT 2011)

[cadaveca]

ASUS ROG is back at it again, tossing another bone our way - the RAMPAGE IV BLACK EDITION. Harkening back to the much older RAMPAGE III BLACK EDITION, this new board seeks to do the same with its ultimately-optimized ROG design and feature focus, but for Intel's X79 Express platform.

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[Frogger]

thanks for another in depth review Dave!!

 

[buildzoid]

Nice review.
So there is absolutely no way to get an IVB-e chip to clock as high as an SB-e(5Ghz+) chip on water/air cooling.

 

[erixx]

I get Aida memory latency of 40 .... I thought it was an important value and now I see this board is much worse...! ???

 

[BorisDG]

Finally here! About the PCB - how many layers has - 8 or 10?

 

[15th Warlock]

Very nice review as always, thank you Dave

 

[VulkanBros]

EXCLUSIVE FEATURES list is sooo loooong.......Great review Dave - as always

 

[Hayder_Master]

awesome review Dave, question why there is around 20 FPS different between motherboards in games?

 

[buggalugs]

I get Aida memory latency of 40 .... I thought it was an important value and now I see this board is much worse...! ???

Quad channel on X79 always has higher memory latency. Its one of the many things I didn't like about the platform.

Anyway, why do they bring out these boards at the end of life of the platform. X79 was done 12 months ago, actually it was done right from the start. Haswell-e and DDR4 will be here soon. Save your money for that.....

 

[BorisDG]

Nope. DDR4 will be expensive and as we already seen - it's same story when DDR3 came out years before - shitty, so really lots of people may skip first generation of this ... same for the chipset (X99). Also you don't know anything about clocking/thermal performance of the Haswell-E processors.

On the other side - with Black Edition you got the full extras and power of X79 chipset. Absolute refined board.

The review is good, but I found (as before) things directly copy-past from other reviews. Also I found the "closer look" section weak - only ASMedia chips described. Digi+ section + new mosfets are totally skipped. Even the cooling solution was there. It will be interesting to post photos of absolutely naked Black Edition and make deeper overview of the components. This board deserves it.

 

[Sihastru]

Hardware wise, the board looks interesting. But I must say it has a few big problems and I'm not sure it's related only to the BIOS/Software. I did see that the reviewer took note of at least one of the RAM problems.

The biggest problem it has right now is its stability. Populated with 64GB of RAM the board just restarts randomly. It does not BSOD, it just restarts, out of nowhere. I hope it's just a BIOS problem, because if it's not then they really messed this up. There are only two BIOS versions available, so it's in the early stages of its development. I do have to add that everything worked in a P9X79 without problems and that it's clearly related to RAM settings, I have to revert to 1333MHz to keep things stable. I'm using a Crucial Ballistix Tactical DDR3L low voltage 1.35V 8x8GB kit with a 4930k. The kit is also XMP 1.3 compliant.

Another annoying problem is the sound driver. The settings do not work. It does Loudness Equalization even if it's unchecked. The only solution was to disable sound enhancements in the Windows settings. Before finding this fix, speaker output was terrible, any low frequency sounds (eg. drums) would muffle the mid and the high end. After the fix it sounds quite delicious. Also sometimes it just refuses to switch on the FP headphone outputs, it detects headphones, it mutes the speakers, but it does not output any sound. Sometimes it works, most of the times it does not. Without the driver package it doesn't work at all.

Other than that, the performance of the board seems inconsistent. Even in the review here, most of the time it's surpassed by the P9X79 Deluxe. And there are some cases where it destroys that same board.

 

[kaellar]

Why the hell none of the reviewers in the world checked the quality of Front Panel Audio jacks on this baby (as well as on Maximus VI Formula)? Rear panel audio jacks are served by alc1150, which is ok, but nowhere near serious DACs. BUT the FPA is served by Cirrus' flagship CS4398 DAC and TI's flagship 6120A2 one-chip hp amplifier. These are TOP chips for audio equipment, and no one even tried them on these Asus MBs while reviewing.

 

[cadaveca]

Why the hell none of the reviewers in the world checked the quality of Front Panel Audio jacks on this baby (as well as on Maximus VI Formula)? Rear panel audio jacks are served by alc1150, which is ok, but nowhere near serious DACs. BUT the FPA is served by Cirrus' flagship CS4398 DAC and TI's flagship 6120A2 one-chip hp amplifier. These are TOP chips for audio equipment, and no one even tried them on these Asus MBs while reviewing.

Huh?

Yes, I did not put test figures, but that is because case wiring can affect audio output. So whatever numbers I give might be meaningless. Also, in testing audio, most often a loop-back cable is used, so you don't get result data that is just the output...it is highly dependent on the input capabilities as well.

Hardware wise, the board looks interesting. But I must say it has a few big problems and I'm not sure it's related only to the BIOS/Software. I did see that the reviewer took note of at least one of the RAM problems.
The biggest problem it has right now is its stability. Populated with 64GB of RAM the board just restarts randomly. It does not BSOD, it just restarts, out of nowhere. I hope it's just a BIOS problem, because if it's not then they really messed this up. There are only two BIOS versions available, so it's in the early stages of its development. I do have to add that everything worked in a P9X79 without problems and that it's clearly related to RAM settings, I have to revert to 1333MHz to keep things stable. I'm using a Crucial Ballistix Tactical DDR3L low voltage 1.35V 8x8GB kit with a 4930k. The kit is also XMP 1.3 compliant.
Another annoying problem is the sound driver. The settings do not work. It does Loudness Equalization even if it's unchecked. The only solution was to disable sound enhancements in the Windows settings. Before finding this fix, speaker output was terrible, any low frequency sounds (eg. drums) would muffle the mid and the high end. After the fix it sounds quite delicious. Also sometimes it just refuses to switch on the FP headphone outputs, it detects headphones, it mutes the speakers, but it does not output any sound. Sometimes it works, most of the times it does not. Without the driver package it doesn't work at all.
Other than that, the performance of the board seems inconsistent. Even in the review here, most of the time it's surpassed by the P9X79 Deluxe. And there are some cases where it destroys that same board.

I did not encounter these issues. I did have some problems, all of which turned out to be a dying PSU and SSD. Replaced those parts, and I haven't had any issues since. I rather upset you are having problems like, that to be honest.

Performance is a bit suspect here, but that is in part due to using SB-E rather than IVB-E, while the other products are using Haswell. This gives a slight twist to the numbers.

awesome review Dave, question why there is around 20 FPS different between motherboards in games?

Turbo profiling. Makes reviewing motherboards hard....do I manually set everything for every board, or do I report out-of-the-box numbers?

Well, I kind of have advanced knowledge of system set-up, so what I get, if setting manually, most users will not get, so the best I can do is report things as they are...out of the box.

That makes my reviews more about my experience with the hardware than the hardware itself. Bench scores are kind of useless in board reviews, except in pointing out problems.

Finally here! About the PCB - how many layers has - 8 or 10?

I'll get back to you on this when I get back home and get the board in my hands.

 

[kaellar]

Huh?

Yes, I did not put test figures, but that is because case wiring can affect audio output. So whatever numbers I give might be meaningless. Also, in testing audio, most often a loop-back cable is used, so you don't get result data that is just the output...it is highly dependent on the input capabilities as well.

Man, I hope you have no thoughts of me trying to offend you. The article is great, and of course the graphs and even the entire loop-back testing of FPA output are obviously meaningless. But don't you think that concrete headphone out deserves to be subjectively tested and mentioned in article? Mine (on Formula) is absolutely superb (looks like I'm lucky guy having the fractal case with ok wires and no audible affect on the audio quality). We did the blind testing with my friend's xonar essence stx, and couldn't determine the winner, while alc1150 was substantionally worse (we tested it on mine HD650 and his PC350 G4ME headset and DT880 phones).

 

[raptori]

Nice review ,so with this system setup and (1x MSI GTX780 GAMING Edition OC 3 GB) we get 326 FPS in Metro LL or am I missing something here ? cause its too much FPS for a single GTX780.

 

[kaellar]

Nice review ,so with this system setup and (1x MSI GTX780 GAMING Edition OC 3 GB) we get 326 FPS in Metro LL or am I missing something here ? cause its too much FPS for a single GTX780.

That's because those benchmarks are done at the lowest settings with roughly 720p screen resolution. This is done to minimise the GPU affect on the result and to determine the more tiny differences in CPUs performance or (like in this case) the memory controllers and motherboard cirquitry in general.

 

[cadaveca]

Man, I hope you have no thoughts of me trying to offend you. The article is great, and of course the graphs and even the entire loop-back testing of FPA output are obviously meaningless. But don't you think that concrete headphone out deserves to be subjectively tested and mentioned in article? Mine (on Formula) is absolutely superb (looks like I'm lucky guy having the fractal case with ok wires and no audible affect on the audio quality). We did the blind testing with my friend's xonar essence stx, and couldn't determine the winner, while alc1150 was substantionally worse (we tested it on mine HD650 and his PC350 G4ME headset and DT880 phones).

Hmm. I guess that's an assumption on my part, and a lack of detail in my writing. The headphone output is pretty stellar, and you bet I did test it, but because audio is so subjective (everyone's ears are different), If an audio solution makes a claim, and then doesn't live up to it, I'd point it out. So what I said in the review was this:

A few things take some getting used to, like audible clicks when the inline relay engages as the software driver loads and unloads and the automatically installed audio software that can affect output a bit, but that 600-ohm headphone amp really makes a difference if you have stuff that needs it, and the extra volume, clarity, and 3D-staging qualities are more than welcome additions in my noisy house.

Which to me, covered what you are looking for.

And don't get me wrong, I just write out what I think in comments, and having put that in the review to basically say what you were looking for, left me confused...not offended! (would be silly to be a reviewer and have a thin skin!).

That's because those benchmarks are done at the lowest settings with roughly 720p screen resolution. This is done to minimise the GPU affect on the result and to determine the more tiny differences in CPUs performance or (like in this case) the memory controllers and motherboard cirquitry in general.

And yeah, exactly as you put it.


Anyway, as to the headphone output...I use it daily right now, and yeah, it's pretty darn good, let me tell you.

 

[Sihastru]

I did not encounter these issues. I did have some problems, all of which turned out to be a dying PSU and SSD. Replaced those parts, and I haven't had any issues since. I rather upset you are having problems like, that to be honest.
Performance is a bit suspect here, but that is in part due to using SB-E rather than IVB-E, while the other products are using Haswell. This gives a slight twist to the numbers.

No, unfortunately I'm not. Already switched the PSU. And if the PSU was failing, the system would not be stable with the memory @1333MHz. Also the ASUS ROG forums are littered with people that have similar problems. Of all of them, only one had a PSU problem.

About the performance issues, I was talking about the other LGA2011 system that is using the P9X79 Deluxe.

Oh, you've missed one of the fan headers... and it's actually the CPU fan header. Just above the main CPU power heatspreader. So there are in total 8 fan headers.

 

[cadaveca]

No, unfortunately I'm not. Already switched the PSU. And if the PSU was failing, the system would not be stable with the memory @1333MHz. Also the ASUS ROG forums are littered with people that have similar problems. Of all of them, only one had a PSU problem.

About the performance issues, I was talking about the other LGA2011 system that is using the P9X79 Deluxe.

Oh, you've missed one of the fan headers... and it's actually the CPU fan header. Just above the main CPU power heatspreader. So there are in total 8 fan headers.

The RAMPAGE IV BLACK EDITION does definitely take a different approach to overclock, for sure, and I did also find the P9X79 Deluxe to be a bit better performing, but those differences are minor, as is the usual case for most motherboards. At the same time, the P9X79 Deluxe came out in 2011, so has had a couple of years to mature it's BIOS into a nearly perfect state.

But what I did find, is that CPU overclocking, at first approach, is much easier on the BLACK EDITION. Secondly, memory overclocking, at the high-end, is incredible compared to the P9.

I am taking part in a HUGE thread about this board over on OCN, and there are some user that have issues, for sure, but in the past 3.5 months that I have had the BLACK EDITION, it easily won me over with it's abilities, and it replaced the P9X79 Deluxe that I had been using for the past two years. Once I took the time to tune everything, it is a far better product (nevermind that P9X79 Deluxe is now discontinued).


My bad on the fan headers...I have fixed that! Thanks!

 

[dumo]

Awesome review!