Final Words & Conclusion
Final Words & Conclusion
The Rampage Extreme series is a classic line from ASUS, much like the X79 version we must admit this X99 SKU is downright terrific, we do hope to see a black edition though as them looks would be killah! Yeah, these are amazing motherboards, I love that. X99 and an 8-core Intel CPU is cool stuff alright. Specs and features wise there is also very little to complain about. This motherboard can be the infrastructure for your 2/3/4-way SLI or Crossfire build. Next to that you will receive WiFi, WiDi, no less than eight 6 Gbps SATA 3 ports and two SATA Express ports as well as an M.2 interface. There are many USB 3.0 ports assigned to the board so you will not find yourself lacking at all. Interesting to see is the improved audio segment with an extra preamp for headphones. Motherboards are slowly reaching audiophile levels, we like that. Nice to see is the vast amount of LAN connectivity with the one Gigabit Ethernet jack both based on Intel NICs, we prefer these jacks over the Killer ones. And the Wireless Ethernet WiFi functionality is just awesome on this board, passing 1 GHz and offering 1.3 GHz on wireless. But we also acknowledge that this will be a little more difficult to position the product as it is pushed so extremely far into the pro-overclockers range with the OC Panel and LN2 functions and so on.
The Platform Experience
The motherboard manufacturers simply went berserk with their motherboard designs, and I believe that 2014 has to be the best year of them all if you look at what the motherboard manufacturers did and are now offering. The overall per-core performance remains seriously nice but is at the level of pretty much any previous Nehalem architecture based processor core, Turbo 2.0 kicks in nicely up-to 3.5 GHz per core for the Core i7 5960X. For the professional user who uses heavily threaded software like content creation, that's where Haswell-E will make a nice difference. Add to that quad-channel DDR4 memory that will offer insane bandwidth and plenty of PCIe lanes and you'll have a platform that will be hard to beat. The Intel X99 chipset is by all means a huge plus and with this release you'll receive huge amounts of SATA3 and USB 3.0 ports among others. The motherboard manufacturers have gone to great length and offer the most luxurious products. It is a feast to the eyes to see and experience really.
Storage
Combined with eight SATA 6Gbps ports we can hardly argue about anything. SATA Express is supported in two-fold, but I foresee that'll be an un-used connector as I do not see or expect SATA Express taking off anytime soon. More interesting I find to be the all new M.2 interface, pop in an M.2 compatible PCI-E SSD and you'll see your SSD quickly perform in the 700/800 Mb/sec range. Overall your SATA and M.2 connectivity is plentiful and top notch when it comes to performance.
Aesthetics
Looks are subjective. Some like skinny and thin, some require a little booteeeh... but hey, taste matters yet will differ. And that makes this a tidbit personal, I find the Rampage V Extreme Edition a nice good looking motherboard with a proper layout and stuffed with features. I really seem to dig the dark design but also have to state that all ROG motherboards tend to look a little too similar. As such, a black edition of this motherbaord would make all the difference in the world.
Tweaking
The tweaking performance of this motherboard was on par with what our sample can handle, and we do have a poor CPU sample in terms of tweaking. Realistically at 1.30 Volts you should be able to get the Core i7 5960X to roughly 4400~4500 MHz on all cores. However we need 1.40 Volts for that. And even though that seems a little shy as a tweak, it remains to be almost 4400 MHz on 8 physical CPU cores. We learned from others that they have been able to reach 4.5 GHz on all 8-cores with just a 1.25v Vcore. Some clock great on low voltages, others behave like a pig, in our case we needed 1.4 Volts to reach 4.4 GHz and have gotten a pig. Regardless, overclocking wise, you will have plenty of headroom to fool around with. It really is a fun processor to tweak with and the motherboard certainly isn't preventing a bad overclock, to the contrary, this board was designed to offer all features needed to quickly get you up-to snuff tweaking wise.
Final Words
The per-core performance among all the motherboards we have tested remains nice but very similar, and since our CPU sample won't go beyond 4.4 GHz all our tweaking results are fairly similar as well. However, if you have a better CPU than we have, then this motherboard will have no problems tweaking the very maximum out of it. This is a Rampage Extreme Edition motherboard, they are designed for exactly that. But sure, the baseline performance of the Rampage V Extreme Edition is on par with any other X99 motherboard. The motherboard offers all that is needed for a long time, features like the eight SATA 6 Gbps ports, the two Gigabit Ethernet interface and that excellent WiFi solution bring a smile to my face. Then there's the 7.1 channel HD audio as delivered by the high-end Realtek ALC1150 codec in conjunction with an amplifier so you get support for quality headphones that have an impedance of up to 600 Ohms. This motherboard is multi-GPU ready up-to 2/3/4 way SLI/Crossfire. Then you can add features like onboard buttons, diagnostic LEDs, a great design, USB 3.0, SATA3, PCI-E Gen 3.0, ease of tweaking. The sky is the limit, as such everything you need from an enthusiast class Haswell-E processor platform is there. The one thing you might dislike is the design and color schema, other than that we cannot think of any significantly negative at all. We have not received pricing info just yet though, so I will have to reserve judgment on that right now however we expect this board to be at 350 EURO. It really is a terrific product though with everything included and then some more, like that hot little gadget - the OC panel. We really like the Rampage V Extreme Edition, but also acknowledge that it probably is a product best served to extreme enthusiast PC users and pro-overclockers solely. The reality is that 99% of you guys that will have a good heat-pipe cooler or All In One Liquid cooling kit, each and everyone of you will reach 4400 MHz as a maximum and for that you do not need an OC Panel or all the LN2 features this board has to offer. The Rampage series motherboard serves a very specific type of crowd. If you are enticed by it, then this puppy might be just what the doctor ordered.
Highly recommended and we'll grant it our most hard to get Top Pick award. It is a fantastic product with terrific looks. But man oh man... imagine this baby in an all black design -- ASUS?? -- come on you guys! :)
Nice, really nice.
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