Gadgetory

it's a bit of storytime so on our way to a soos a giant thunderstorm took over Taipei the rain was a rampage the taxi driver actually offered us an umbrella six times because nothing extreme which slows down to see the ROG lineup of motherboards let's talk about what we saw after this our complex trip is brought to you by fan tech schoolmaster and MSI so in many ways the X 299 nine words can be considered an evolution upwards from the current x99 platform so rather than needing add-on controllers for features like high-speed nvme PCI SSDs and you've got two connectors these all come baked in natively and Intel opting will be there to the sky like X processors feature up to 44 pcie 3.0 lanes from the CPU itself not to mention a ton of additional functionality from the chipset and those 44 lanes don't provide enough bandwidth for the rumored triple 16x layouts some we're hoping for but it does allow for 32 lanes to be used for graphics cards while the additional lanes can be split off for a single x8 GPU slot or for length 4 attached PCIe storage devices and one interesting addition to this lineup is intel's vrock technology so when used with an optional asus atom card it allows for stupidly quick raid arrays with m dot 2 SSDs and we can't wait to try this thing out so let's start with a flagship Rainford 6 extreme now this one is one absolutely stunning board for gamers and other enthusiasts who have liquid cooling systems basically this is the flagship Asus x99 gaming board and it has every possible feature that means triple GPU support even though aim D and NVIDIA are moving towards primarily dual GPU setups there's the front panel USB 3.1 gen2 header additional PCIe slots plenty of other connectivity and the design we've all come to know from the ROG boards the Wi-Fi chip is an interesting addition while most other motherboards either don't have wireless connectivity at all or use the fast AC standard asus has equipped with new rampage boards with the wireless ad this is next generation standard that promises speeds of up to four point six gigabits per second this motherboard also has dual flow headers for water cooling that lets you monitor cooling speed and temperatures flow data and potential leakage points formation can be monitored through these sensors placed throughout the custom water blocks and unlike many other x2 99 motherboards the rampant six extreme has triple integrated ember two slots that can be used for great arrays instead of the optional video ah Christ card and - and the two drives are populated in the demo two slots beside the memory modules and one super unique feature the rampage brings to the market is called the live - OLED and it lets your monitor system temperatures frequencies and fan speeds right on the motherboard in real time and it's located on the bottom portion of the rear i/o housing which is on the best location for display for example other ASUS motherboards that they've launched have the OLED screen front and center below the CPU socket that is much more visible the dashboard will allow custom display messages and graphics also and we'll just add a little extra flair to your build and it really is amazing but I think it will appeal more to people who run an open build since it will likely be hard to see if the board is installed inside the case especially in that position but the lighting is for sure next level with slightly transparent armor all over that gives that needed color ambience plus the full LED strip on the right side that will look absolutely stunning with reflections inside the case but what happens if you don't want to spend all that fortune on the rampage six extreme or you're not going to into extreme overclocking with Asus apex series well that's where this tricks X $2.99 e gets flavored into the equation so this looks like a great board with standard ATX dimensions a monochromatic color scheme and a few LEDs for that touch of additional color in particular very distinct ROG depth logo in the center that to me does not really look that good but color wise it is fully controllable via the Asus or a sync application and while the Strix is a lot more basic than the other models they're launching it still comes with dual end up two slots for nvme SSDs with integrated heat sinks for optimal temperatures on board Wi-Fi and USB 3.1 gen2 connectors for the front and back panels and honestly what all of this it is kind of hard to understand why someone would need to spend so much more on the rampage or the apex but one cool touch on the back are these continued white stripes to keep up with the color transition on both sides and so that's it for the ROG boards the eight board that is designated for overclocking will also be available it just wasn't finalized and that's not really shown during the show so what do you guys think about the X 299 so far from a soos or any of these boards worth your money is there something you would like to see let us know in the comments below thanks so much for watching don't forget to subscribe and stay tuned for more complex coverage