Final Words & Conclusion
Final words & conclusion
You'll be hard-pressed to find a more exquisite looking and feature rich motherboard other than the Rampage VI Extreme. It is amazing to look at, I mean with the RGB lighting and that OLED screen you can just stare at the board for 5 minutes, and not get bored. Recent BIOS updates have shifted the performance of our 10-core processor here and there a bit. It also seems that power consumption (non-tweaked) overall seems a bit more friendly. Tweaked, however, temps easily run out of control. With the latest BIOSes being more refined, X299 slowly but steadily has gotten better. You can configure RGB the way you prefer it to be, but by default... man, that looks nice. Next to that, features, features, features ...10G Ethernet, AC and AD WIFI, triple M.2, quad (mechanical) PCIe x16 slots, yeah, this board is pretty amazing, but unfortunately so is its staggering price at 599 USD/EURO.
Performance
We tested with the current and latest October public (beta) BIOS, this firmware shows the temps for the 10-core 7900X to be at ~75 Degrees C under full load conditions at default clock frequencies. That is measured based on an LCS cooler though. As stated, performance has shifted here and there a bit, but overall the system feels way more fine-tuned than what we have seen with early X299 releases. Performance for the 10-core proc is as expected and falls within the baseline of what may be expected. Your power consumption will remain on the high side though.
Tweaking
A note on VRM heat - during overclocking I once again pointed my thermal camera at it and the chokes certainly light up, but they always will of course. Power cables, however, did not show heat levels that worried me. Tweaking wise I have re-defined my clock limit to 4500 MHz on all 10 cores (7900X). For that, a more mild 1.25v is enough. Now that will still consume a lot of power and really requires good cooling, But it is a stable enough option. Long term though, I would advise dropping to a ~4300 MHz all-core tweak at maximum default (auto) voltages, if you want to tweak at all and on all cores.
Power consumption
With the system at idle with a GeForce GTX 1080 installed / 16 GB memory / SSD and the X299 motherboard, I hovered at roughly 110 Watts in IDLE. That was a little higher compared to other X299 boards, likely related to the RGB system (hey, these need power). Also, and be aware of this, if you leave RGB enabled when powered off, your board will continuously consume 5.5 Watts. 5.5x24x365/1000 x 20 cents = 10 bucks per year on power just for the RGB illuminated. When we stressed the processor in a 100% run we reach roughly 275 Watts with this ten core part (that was a Prime 1024M stress test though). When we game we hover at 325 Watts with the GeForce GTX 1080, but obviously that factor is dependent on the type of graphics card and game you use of course and, sure - keep in mind, most games certainly do not utilize the ten CPU cores.
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 3.0 Lanes
- Skylake-X six and eight core procs get 28 PCI-Express 3.0 Lanes
- Skylake-X ten core procs get 44 PCI-Express 3.0 Lanes
DDR4 Memory
Ever since Haswell-E was released along came DDR4 memory. With Skylake-X DDR4 may be clocked a notch faster at 2,677 MHz. Honestly, if you pick up some nice 2,133 MHz DIMMs, at quad-channel they'll offer more than plentiful bandwidth. A 3,200 MHz kit, for example, is far more expensive and does offer better bandwidth but the performance increases in real-world usage will be hard to notice. Unless you transcode videos over the processor a lot. DDR4 mostly was released for lower voltages and higher frequencies. 2,133 MHz CL 14 or CL 15 memory combo with quad-channel will already get you to 50~60 GB/sec. While impressive to observe, for gaming you will not notice huge performance improvements with high memory bandwidth, but with content creation and video transcoding, this kind of bandwidth certainly does make a difference. As always, my advice would be to go with lower clocked DDR4 memory with decent timings, but get more of it. Don't go for 8 GB, get four DIMMs and in total a minimum of 16 GB.
The bottom line
The ROG Rampage VI Extreme is an amazing motherboard, it ticks all the right boxes with good stuff throughout the books. I am setting aside the Intel processor for a minute, as that actually is degrading this motherboard review a little. The ROG Rampage VI Extreme has it all, four x16 PCIe slots, AC and AD WIFI, the fantastic looking RGB design alongside super fast quad-channel memory options, DIMM.2 offers two M.2 SSDs, and under the chipset heatsink, you may tuck another one away. Next, to that, this board is made for tweaking and overclocking. That tweaking is done by just changing a few registers in the BIOS, it is 100% clear, handy and lovely to work with the EUFI BIOS. Unfortunately, our processor is a huge problem tweaking wise as it runs too hot, too fast. But that does not shy away from the fact of how nice this motherboard is. Huge props as well for embedding a proper 10G Ethernet jack, I mean kudos here! Somebody at ASUS has been reading my reviews and thus wishes alright! I have not compared it to other X299 motherboards due to the latest BIOSes making a bigger difference. X299 / Skylake-X was rushed, and that didn't do its launch any good, period. The motherboard is lovely and feature-rich enough, has a properly nice design and feel to it, combined with proper components. Features wise this kit offers enough SATA 6 Gbps ports, two Ethernet jacks and a lovely audio solution. Unique also is the support for addressable RGB. Some will not care about it, others do. You may spend time tuning all the different light zones and effects with this Rampage VI Extreme, disco baby. Do we not have anything to criticize about ASUS' 'latest flagship? Of course, the hard-core cash you'll need to put down, but it is a true flagship motherboard and deserves our Top Pick award.
Handy related downloads:
- Sign up to receive a notice when we publish a new article
- Or go back to Guru3D's front page.
