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When it comes to shelling out your hard earned cash on a motherboard you really should buy what you need or if feasible, what you may need. The average overclocker or gamer looking for a performance oriented X79 R.O.G motherboard will be very satisfied with the Rampage IV Formula as without going extreme this is thee A ticket board. If you want to do serious testing and go beyond what most users would deem a standard day of computing, then my friend you may be in need of the Extreme parameters and options offered in the Extreme X79. The X79 platform is the High-End of the spectrum when talking PC and it is not for the meek of wallet or need, this is High-End all the way and geared for a different crowd than the internet surfer or moderate gamer. ASUS did a lot of research before delivering this motherboard to the masses and it shows in its design and its implementation.
From direct monitoring of your system components to the mass amount of offered connections and modifications available the Rampage IV Extreme is something way out of the ballpark for most users. You can see from all the information in this review just how many different features there are on the Rampage IV Extreme. From Audio to interface to overclocking you get the absolute best in class features as no other motherboard I have seen has the vast amount of options all on a single piece of silicon. The ability to on the fly make adjustments using the R.O.G OC Key makes users of LN2 have an easier time, and ASUS also has a solution via the GPU Hotwire feature which allows wires to be soldered to a GPU and routed to the pin headers on the Extreme board connecting with standard style 2 pin plugs similar to what is used on a chassis front panel connector. This allows for direct control of your GPU voltages and is a unique tool for the serious overclocker that when combined with their other software tools becomes a powerful weapon in the hand of the right person who knows their stuff.
I was able to achieve excellent overclocking scores on this motherboard achieving an overclock of over 5.0GHz using the Intel I7 3960X and their stock cooler, I was also able to solder a pair of Direct CU II 7970 cards directly to the motherboard and will tell you more about those conclusions in another review, but lets just sat WOW and go from there. At first we were going to build another Extreme system, but after using the board on my test station I have decided it has found a home as my X79 testing board as it just has an almost infinite amount of options to explore and really leaves a lot of room for change and modification so here it stays. When you have the ability to do so much with a motherboard it just opens a lot of doors for you to explore, and if you really want the headroom and flexibility of options that is where this motherboard really shines. Also I only used a very low-end water cooler on this system, with better cooling and memory I could achieve a better overclock and if I wanted to go LN2, all the options are here for me to Rock and Roll. If you are looking for the Ultimate Enthusiast/Test System Motherboard for the X79 platform, or just want to have the option of going the distance if you get the chance, The ASUS X79 Rampage IV Extreme is a worthy product well worth looking into. The bottom line for the ASUS X79 Rampage Extreme is this: many motherboards made today are very similar in their feature set and their options, not true with X79 Rampage IV Extreme as it breaks the standard mold and recreates itself as the absolute king of X79 motherboards and a Solid Editors Choice Product.
