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Not just another pretty face?

ASUSTeK is the most prolific motherboard manufacturer in the world. They command 40% of the motherboard market for PCs today. Their motherboards are in all manner of PCs from ASUS designed and sold PCs, as well as larger builders like HP and Dell, to the enthusiast user who purchases components individually looking for the best overall system that they can build. ASUS designs motherboards for everyone running desktop computers. Budget PC builders to enthusiast overclockers, if you’re building a PC, chances are you’ve looked at an ASUS motherboard when deciding on your components.

This type of market dominance comes from the ability to bring new technologies to market early, if not first, and in a variety of models that ensure they have a motherboard that fits your criteria. From a stable desktop office PC to a Core i7 980X liquid nitrogen overclocking beast, and in every price range in between. One of their more popular brands is the Republic of Gamers (R.O.G.) series.  First started in 2006, this product line spans motherboards, video cards and even R.O.G. Laptops. Republic of Gamers newest motherboard is the LGA1366 X58 chipset-based Rampage III Formula. The Rampage model line has always signified the highest quality and latest features available, designed specifically for gamers and enthusiasts alike for the Intel platform. The Formula is the newest edition to the existing Rampage III boards consisting of the “big brother” Rampage III Extreme, and the “little brother” Rampage III Gene.

This review will cover the performance and features of the Rampage III Formula.  Overclocking capabilities of the board will be pushed and 24/7 overclocking capabilities will be tested.

Features:

The feature list of the new Formula motherboard is extensive and covers every detail. Listed below are the stand out features one may not find on other motherboards.

• 2 SATA 6Gbs ports
• 2 USB3 ports
• Dual ESATA
• Intel designed Ethernet
• 3 way multi GPU (16x, 16x/16x, or 16x/8x/8x)
• Dual removable BIOS chips and BIOS switch onboard
• Rear Clear CMOS button for Case users
• Onboard Power, Reset, Clear CMOS and “Go/MemOK!” Buttons
• Extreme Engine Digi+ voltage regulation
• ASUS ProBelt – Onboard voltage read points
• ASUS GameFirst – Tool to manage network access to give priority to games
• ROG Connect
• QPI LLC Jumper
• LN2 Mode Jumper

The motherboard also has plenty of other great features that are intrinsic to the X58 chipset and ASUS motherboards in particular. To include them all would be a novella at best, so for the sake of brevity the entire list of features can be viewed at ASUS’ website here. The Intel ICH10R handles most of the storage duties, including 6 SATA 3Gb/s ports and all of the USB 2.0 ports including the special ROG connect port. The JMicron JMB363 controller handles ESATA duties and can be run in SATA, RAID0 and RAID1 modes. The feature list mentions that it is also used for PATA duties, however no legacy storage ports are included on the motherboard. Marvell 9128 PCIe SATA 6Gb/s controller handles the SATA III duties and NEC of course handles the dual USB 3.0 ports. Using the USB3 ports for fast USB2 storage drives is a good idea as was found in our A-DATA USB3 Flash Drive review.

The Packaging:

Packaging is a marketing tool for retail establishments (commonly referred to as “Brick ‘n’ Mortar”) but also effects those that receive products through mail shipping services. From utilitarian to extravagant, packaging varies as much as build quality and features. ASUS ROG motherboards are designed as feature rich, top of the line products, so it should come as no surprise that the packaging is also designed with a keen eye on features and looks. The retail package consists of a heavy stock paper box with a plastic carrying handle at the top, packaged around two separate stiff corrugated boxes stuffed inside. This style is common for the ROG series of motherboards that they produce (Rampage or Crosshair). Using two separate boxes not only helps to address physical protection to the product, it also showcases the product by using a thick but clear plastic shell over the motherboard. This allows the outer box to be equipped with a flap covering a cutout so that one can view the product physically without the need to open the package.

Opening the box reveals the two separate cartons inside. One houses the motherboard as already mentioned. The second package holds all of the accessories and documentation as well as the software. Driver disks are so 1995; the ROG motherboard disk is a DVD-ROM disk that includes all of the drivers to get you up and running, whether XP, Vista, 7 or Linux. It also holds all of the software features ASUS designed into the motherboard including system monitors, tweaking programs, EPU controls, anti-virus software, a PDF copy of the manual (Adobe reader is also included), BIOS logo maker, ROG connect software (with Connect, Poster and TweakIt), and ROG Video and it is a bootable Linux CD for BIOS recovery. Full featured right down to the DVD.

In the last two pictures there are two items that seem so obvious to have been included with motherboards for years, however no one but ASUS has. The ASUS quick connect in the last picture is for attaching front panel wires so that you will have one easy connection to your motherboard once it is installed in the case. Instead of fumbling around with a manual or a flash light hoping you managed to fit that tiny connector to the correct pins, it’s easy to read no fuss, no muss connections.

Another unique item in the box is the SATA cable labels. For years with IDE devices messing up the wires was pretty difficult to do and it did not really matter if you did. Most PCs used a single cable to attach HDD and Optical Drive, later it became common to have 2 in a system, even then the IDE cable for the optical drive was a ATA33 40 wire 40 pin cable instead of the 133 spec 80 wire 40 pin cable (it feels thinner).  Still very simple to keep track off.  However on a modern system a Gamer might be running 2 drives in raid0 for Operating system another 2-3 in a redundant array for large storage and still another cable for the Optical drive, as no legacy ports exist on the motherboard. Stickers for labelling both ends of your data cables makes it simple to Identify which drives are which.

Next: The Rampage III Formula In-Depth

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