The Board - A Closer Look

With all the added USB 3.0 connectivity, there have to be controllers or hubs that drive them. I located a bunch of different ASMedia parts that do.


The ASMedia USB 3.0 parts are all over the board, but ASMedia also supplies pretty much all of the external hubs and controllers used on the ASUS RAMPAGE IV BLACK EDITION.


ASMedia AS1061 controllers, two of which are pictured above, also provide the added SATA connectivity I mentioned.


The audio portion of the ASUS RAMPAGE IV BLACK EDITION motherboard is a special design ASUS took from its high-end ASUS ROG MAXIMUS IV boards. The entire portion features high-end audio components, including a decent 600-ohm headphone amp. Based on the Realtek ALC1150 CODEC, the ROG SupremeFX BLACK audio design nearly matches the performance of discrete audio card. The area reserved for audio circuitry is isolated from the rest of the board, and a series of red LEDs on the board's back even highlight that line of separation. The red LEDs can be disabled in the BIOS if you want to go "full stealth".


With all the discrete parts and slots, the signals traveling all around the board need to be managed, and several ICS parts in various places keep things nice and stable when pushing that high overclock.


When it comes to monitoring, this board's huge amount of functionality requires not one, but two Super I/O chips – one with ASUS's ROG label and the other by Nuvoton. We have come across this implementation in many other ASUS ROG products, and all the by now standardized items are here, and then some. ASUS did not call this board the “BLACK EDITION” at random, after all.


LAN connectivity is provided by Intel since that is what most enthusiasts prefer. You ask and you shall receive – most often with ASUS.