Introduction

It has been several months since Intel's IvyBridge-E CPUs launched, but there has not been a lot of fanfare about the chips themselves since then, except for the general interest users already headed down that upgrade path expressed. There are many of us who simply cannot ignore the Intel X79 Express platform's additional CPU cores and PCIe connectivity, and those of us who cannot also like to clock the crap out of such chips to get as much performance as possible out of today's commercially available hardware. With that in mind, we need the ultimate board to be able to do so truly effectively, and ASUS has answered that need with the ASUS RAMPAGE IV BLACK EDITION.

The ASUS RAMPAGE IV BLACK EDITION draws its heritage from the ASUS RAMPAGE III BLACK EDITION motherboard, a product so favored by many that it still commands top dollars on the used market place – that is, if you can find one. Previously launched in limited numbers, the ASUS RAMPAGE III BLACK EDITION has been held in high regard by those that like to push their hardware to the absolute limit since it features a highly tweaked twist to overclocking on the X58 Express platform. Providing the same super-optimized twist with the Intel X79 Express platform, ASUS decided not to limit production numbers of this gal dressed in black, instead providing the ultimate IVB-E overclocking experience to anyone who wants to pony up their hard-earned dollars for the high $500 entry-fee. The ASUS RAMPAGE IV BLACK EDITION has big shoes to fill, and having missed out on the last one, I have been pretty eager to get my hands on this one myself. I expect a lot. Can the ASUS RAMPAGE IV BLACK EDITION live up to the hype?

Specifications

Intel X79 Express Chipset

Launched on November 14th, 2011, the Intel X79 Express chipset is very similar to the Intel P67 Express and Intel Z68 Express chipsets launched earlier in 2011. The Intel X79 Express platform supports 40 PCIe 3.0 lanes via the CPU for graphics, while the Intel Z68/P67 Express chipsets only support 16 lanes. The Intel X79 Express PCH itself supports eight lanes of PCIe 2.0 connectivity for external devices and houses all of the I/O functionality for dual SATA 6 Gb/s ports and quad SATA 3 Gb/s ports, which are managed via Intel Rapid Storage Technology 3.0 for RAID support. USB 2.0/3.0 and HD Audio are also supported as is eSATA and Gigabit Ethernet connectivity.


The SKT2011 CPUs the platform supports are very similar to the previously released SKT1155 CPUs, but nearly everything offered in the SKT1155 platform has been doubled, including cache and core count. Going by Intel's marketing material, the SB-E CPUs (as they are referred to in enthusiast circles) feature eight total processing cores, although two have been disabled to keep power in check. Rather than a total of eight active cores we have six, but they appear as twelve separate cores to the OS because of Hyper-Threading.

The PCIe on the CPU can be split many ways, including dual x16 links and a single x8 link at the same time, a single x16 link with triple x8 links, or a single x16 link with dual x8 and dual x4 links. Together, these options offer a lot of flexibility for multi-GPU configurations while supporting up to five devices connected directly to the CPU. While only up to four discrete GPUs are supported in current multi-GPU rendering options, the 5th link can be used with an external RAID controller or another PCIe device that is commonly found in high-end builds.

Packaging

The ASUS RAMPAGE IV BLACK EDITION motherboard showed up on my doorstep in November, and although I knew the board was going to be coming soon because of pre-release information, my first sample arrived unannounced, the knock of the courier on my front door a pleasant surprise during the early Christmas shopping season. The box you see in the pictures above was actually of the second board I received as the first was slightly different. The “BLACK” theme and Assassin's Creed IV tie-in are pretty obvious.


Flip the flap open to look at the board inside through a plastic window. The back of the flap covers several feature highlights we usually find here on ASUS ROG packaging. The board itself and its accessories come in separate boxes inside the main box, with the new ASUS OC Panel tugged into the top of the plastic cover protecting the ASUS RAMPAGE IV BLACK EDITION.


There is a decent amount of heft to the board's box itself, which makes the ASUS RAMPAGE IV BLACK EDITION feel worth the $500 that left your pocket to get it. The accessories box is packed to the brim with goodies, so much so that pretty much anything you will ever need and some stuff you will not is here.

Contents

After dumping the accessories into my photo box, I spread everything out and took a bunch of pictures, since everything here would not have fit into one. All the basic ASUS ROG accessories are here, along with a special backplate that modifies the socket a bit for those that use alternate cooling methods. There are Cossfire and SLI bridges for two-, three- or four-card configurations on NVIDIA's side and a single Crossfire cable for AMD cards, which I find interesting. The ten included SATA cables come in two varieties, which makes separating the plugs on the board and their connectivity easy.


The I/O plate comes with clear labels for every port, which makes finding the plug you need easy, and that same easy-to-connect theme also applies to the headers for case wiring, where you plug the cables into the headers outside of your case before plugging the entire block into the board, which beats pulling out a flashlight and plugging each wire in individually. It is a small thing, but covering every aspect of how you wire your new build up and making it as easy as possible is definitely one of ASUS's priorities. The SATA cable stickers ASUS made a point of including only build on that idea.


You will find your Assassin's Creed IV coupon on the back of the manual if you bought a board with a key (keys are limited). The included DVD has drivers for Windows8 and Windows7. Other operating systems are not supported.


There is also an antenna for the bundled Wi-Fi/Bluetooth controllers and a case magnet that doubles up as a tool for releasing PCIe clips. A full list of all the bundled accessories is below:

• User's manual
• I/O shield
• 10 x SATA 6Gb/s cables
• 1 x ASUS 2T2R dual-band Wi-Fi moving antennas (Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/g/n/ac compliant)
• 1 x 3-Way SLI bridge
• 1 x 4-Way SLI bridge
• 1 x SLI bridge
• 1 x CrossFire cable
• 1 x 2 in 1 Q-connectors
• 1 x ROG connect cable
• 1 x 12 in 1 ROG cable labels
• 1 x ROG magnet
• OC panel kit:
  - 1 x OC panel
  - 1 x OC panel 5.25'' bay metal case
  - 1 x OC panel cable