ASUS Rampage III Gene Review
Board Overview
Published: 28th June 2010 | Source: ASUS | Price: TBC |
Board Overview
The packaging follows the usual ROG style, being red and silver with a very bold logo in teh boards centre and the ROG splash on the bottom right. The rear panel has the usual Asus clear layout showing the main features and specifications.
Opening her up we have the clear top we've recently seen on the Rampage III Extreme and Maximum III Extreme. Lifting that out for a moment we find the many inclusions that you always get with a ROG motherboard.
As well as the things we're all used to seeing, (SATA cables, IO shield, ROG Connect cable etc), we also see a big ROG sticker. Should you wish to adorn the side of your case with something slightly less discrete than the standard case badge.
Getting our first look we can see that it follows the Rampage IIIs unique heatsink design for the southbridge and chipset coolers, but as we'll see below the power-phase cooling certainly doesn't.
Flipping the coolers off we reveal the chipset in all it's glory. We'll get a closer look at them later on.
Understandably with this being a compressed mATX board the CPU socket is busy to say the least. The fin style cooler is almost designed to take the skin off your knuckles when installing a large cooler and it's curious to see this fairly old-school sink used on such a modern board.
The DIMM slots have the excellent single tab design we saw previously on ROG labelled boards. The top right of the board has the vertical battery we've seen on other high-end mATXs, so careful with that axe Eugene.
Below the good-looking chipset heatsink we have the PCIe slots and various headers. Although the PCIe release lever is a vast improvement upon most solutions, it still doesn't really allow you to easily take a full-cover card out. Anyone who's tried to remove a modern reference heatsink card without removing their skin/RAM/motherboard will know what I mean.
On the bottom right we have the normal front-panel headers, SATA ports etc. We also find the "GO" button which allows you to load a specific set of BIOS settings with just the push of a button. Vital for when you are overclocking.
The I/O panel has everything you'd expect to find. The main extras are the ROG Connect, and the CMOS reset on the rear. Always a handy feature.
Most Recent Comments
Wow - Overclock3D have done it again with the WORLDS FIRST REVIEW of the Rampage III Gene!!!!
Excellent publicity. Asus must totally love you dude
Lets just say this is the warm up act eh A little while ago you could pick up the latest Alienware chassis on Ebay for about £200 with a 1kw Delta PSU. Few of my friends got them and put in this board.. It kicked seven shades out of the actual Alienware
Is this just me and if not could you have a word with Asus? TBH that's the ONLY gripe I ever had with my board was waiting all day for the updates to download and then finding they had dropped and corrupted..
If this post needs moving then please do so
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Originally Posted by name='AlienALX'
This board kicks all kinds of ass. LOADS of people I know are using it.
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My bad. It was the Rampage 2 (or II) Gene.
God Asus are confusing with their names
Well if it's anything like the one before (and I'm sure it is) and it improves on the one before (which I am sure it does) then it will be another hit out of the park for Asus.
They definitely don't have any competition IMO. the eVGA one is the same size, more money and a terribly bad overclocker.
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Originally Posted by name='AlienALX'
Ooo. I wonder what the heck the board was that they're all using them. I'm sure it was this one.
My bad. It was the Rampage 2 (or II) Gene. God Asus are confusing with their names Well if it's anything like the one before (and I'm sure it is) and it improves on the one before (which I am sure it does) then it will be another hit out of the park for Asus. They definitely don't have any competition IMO. the eVGA one is the same size, more money and a terribly bad overclocker. |
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Originally Posted by name='tinytomlogan'
Lets just say this is the warm up act eh
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Originally Posted by name='runebeard'
oooh of course! I almost forgot that is coming up very soon. I won't be able to get one, but i can still drool over the hardware. It'll be like the centre spread of playboy except it won't bounce quite as well as theirs
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Originally Posted by name='enyownz'
what do you mean "that"
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Originally Posted by name='Runebeard'
If that is what I think it is, I wouldn't want to spoil the surprise so obviously. Fancy a bit of a riddle? Let's just say I hope it doesn't bring Phobos and Deimos with it. Hopefully I'm right and Tom will know exactly what I mean
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Nice review!
Andy
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