Final Words & Conclusion
Final words & conclusion
The Rampage VI Extreme Omega is a fantastic motherboard, really it ticks all the right boxes and then some. You name it, and it is on there as a feature. Next, to that the looks also are incredibly beautiful, everything is right. Well, everything expects the price level of course. The infrastructure this board however offers sits in a line of equality expensive processors. When Intel released processors with more than 10 cores, the dynamic changed. The procs are fairly power hungry, and as this review once again has shown, once overclocked the power draw is massive. Within that mindset, motherboard manufacturers jumped into designing refresh X299 motherboards with strong and powerful VRMs and added features.
We need to talk about money. The cost of ownership if this bad boy is a daunting 699 USD / Euros. As if the 7960X proc tested today isn't expensive enough at 1500 EUR. As huge as that amount is, you can tell where the money went. The add-in DIMM2 cards for extra properly cooled full-speed M.2 SSDs, and the advanced 10 GigE Ethernet jack would easily cost you 100~150 bucks each in retail alone. Then there's the intricate design, component selection, strong VRM, proper VRM cooling, quality audio and things like Dual-Band AC WIFI as well as 1 Gbps and that 10 Gbps Ethernet. Yes, everything and anything on this board screams extreme.
Performance
With the current BIOS firmware, the processor temps remain trivial, at ~65 Degrees C under full load conditions with the 16-core 7960X. ASUS is bypassing the Intel recommended p-state spec only slightly as you can observe from power consumption levels. With most synthetic benchmarks you will not notice huge perf differences. Performance is as expected with a many-core (10+ cores) Intel processor. The CPU and motherboard, of course, are a match made in technology heaven.
Tweaking
We paired the motherboard with a 7960X, a 16-core Intel processor, and we cannot tame even with a 280mm radiator based liquid cooler. The motherboard is extreme, the proc really could run 4700~4800 on all cores, it's just that the heat levels of the processor do not allow for it. And that is a bit of a dim moment when you figure that out to be a fact. If you pair it with the right proc, and leave the clocks as reference as can be, the temperatures of that proc will remain under control. But the current 10+ core processor range from Intel as well as AMD Threadripper are difficult to tweak products. Your best bet is to find the highest all-core frequency based on Voltage defaults. That's likely a 4400~4500 MHz range which, let's be honest, ain't bad either. Our 4600 MHz tweak was showing 110c temps, of course, some cores will then down throttle to protect themselves. Processors aside, this is an amazing motherboard, really it is, as IF you had the right cooling combined with, say, a delidded proc, the mobo would not restrict your overclock whatsoever.
Power consumption
Depending on the hardware p-state the motherboard is fitted with, your numbers will be all over the place. So, with sixteen cores you get a 165 Watt TDP processor. With the system at idle with a GeForce RTX 2080 Ti installed / 32 GB memory / SSD and the X299 motherboard, I hovered at roughly 105 Watts in IDLE. When we stressed the processor in a 100% run we reach almost 300 Watts (entire PC) with this sixteen core part (it was a Prime 1024M stress test though). When tweaked to 4600 MHz all core, we got scared .. as we passed 500 Watts just stressing the processor.
PCI-Express 3.0
We quickly have to discuss PCI-Express lanes, as honestly here is Intel just goofing up. Here is the breakdown:
- Kaby Lake-X quad core gets 16 PCI-Express Lanes 3.0
- Skylake-X six and eight core procs get 28 PCI-Express Lanes 3.0
- Skylake-X ten or more core procs get 44 PCI-Express Lanes 3.0
The bottom line
I can throw all kinds of positive words at the Omega, as really the board deserves that. It is mega-sweet in features and looks. I still find the current 10+ core processor range from Intel to be an incredibly difficult sell. Compared to a similar core version Threadripper, Intel wins in performance. However, Intel has one thing against it, processor pricing. Intel is almost twice as expensive per core, compared to a similar core Threadripper. The 7960X proc we used is sweet (as long as you don't tweak it too much), it is a sub-1500 EUR/USD proc. However, if you do plan to order a proc of this price range, you need to pair it with a proper motherboard. The Rampage VI Extreme Omega really is the perfect match with this proc series offering both beauty and versatility. I like the DIMM2 solution, we LOVE the 10 Gbps GigE jack, you get WIFI, that OLED screen and BIOS nirvana as well. Aside from the sheer amount of cash you need to put down for the mobo and platform as a whole, I cannot think of anything negative, and that is the honest truth. Yeah, maybe a 4th PCIe x16 slot would have been nice. But with the current state of multi-GPU, I am fine with triple x16 PCIe slots. Man, what a dauntingly impressive product. I am handing out a top pick award here, which we give away rarely. But that's purely based on hardware, features and sheer look as that price remains a bottleneck for almost anybody.
Handy related downloads:
- Sign up to receive a notice when we publish a new article
- Or go back to Guru3D's front page.
