ASUS Rampage V Extreme Review
Published by Hiwa Pouri on 12.09.14Page:
Layout
The design of ASUS Republic of Gamers motherboards is an evergreen in the industry and the black and red color scheme has been copied over and over again. Since ASUS ROG is not known for design experiments, you can get incremental changes with this board. The layout itself is well thought and since ASUS is always taking Intel's reference specifications regarding socket clearance into account, there is enough space to install large aircoolers. The fact that there are SATA connectors which have been angled by 90 degrees allows an easy installation of oversized graphics cards.
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This is basically the first point where things are starting to become really interesting. A first glance at the power design reveals that ASUS once again swapped the chokes and with the Rampage V Extreme you get so called MicroFine chockes. Apart from that there are mosfets from International Rectifier, which include low- and high-side. ASUS did not touch the 10K black solid caps, which apparently appear to be of sufficient quality even for ASUS's highest-end motherboard. In the case of the PWM controller chip there ASUS is using their own design, which they call Digi+. Overall the maker is keen on pointing out that a high-end power design is not simply about adding more phases, what's more important is the quality of the parts used as well as being able to provide a fully integrated solution.
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With X99 Intel advanced to the next page in the book of DDR memory. One part of that is that all cards have been shuffled and motherboard vendors had to put a lot of time and effort into creating mature motherboards before the launch. In the case of the memory power design, there is a total of four phases taking a care of stable current supply. The phases are similar to the CPU power design, but since DIMMs aren't as demanding as CPUs we don't find MicroFine chokes also here but R24 chokes. Apart from that there are mosfests from International Rectifier again as well as 10K Black Caps. Overall this is a highly capable current supply considering it "only" has to take care of the DIMM slots. According to the specs DDR4 3'300 (OC) / 3'000 (OC) / 2'800 (OC) / 2'666 (OC) / 2'400 (OC) / 2'133 MHz is supported, but we've heard that behind closed doors 4'000 MHz have already been reached. But as it always is, when a new platform is this young, there is a lot that still needs to be learned and that does by far not only refer to motherboard makers but also the memory vendors.
The heatsinks of today’s motherboards, especially when it comes to the high-end models, greatly add to the overall looks of a product. What ASUS is doing usually when it comes to their ROG motherboards is changing the shape of the individual blocks by a little bit in order to freshen up the looks in general. A great idea, which emerged during the past year was to make the VRM cooler next to the DIMM slots on the left side cover the I/O connectors. This way the design appears to be cleaner and less crowded. A closer look reveals, that there is a heatpipe for even heat distribution between memory and CPU power design. There are two more heatsinks on this motherboard. The one between CPU socket and first PCIe slot features a red backlight, which makes the ROG logo and writing glow in the dark. Last but not least there is another aluminum block covering the PCH.
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