Gadgetory

the rampage three extreme is probably the motherboard I've received more requests for an unboxing for than any other board in the history of my channel so let's start with the actual motherboard itself the basic features it is a rampage series board so that means it is part of their highest tier of motherboards even within the Republic of gamers brand so it's a 1366 motherboard it supports LGA 1366 of course including Intel's latest six core processors so you got support for all core i7 extreme as well as all core i7 1366 CPUs you've got support for SLI and crossfire up to 3-way but that gets a little bit more complicated and I'll tell you more once we get the board opened up the box is huge and comes with a window so you can see the motherboard on the store shelf you can see they've got we'll talk more about the board after so basic features you've got there ROG connect so you can plug the motherboard into another computer and overclock with the other computer you've got extreme engine digi+ so that means you've got digital PWM USB bios flashback more on that in a little bit and it also includes some bundled software 3dmark Vantage and Kaspersky antivirus now this motherboard actually introduces besides that USB BIOS flash feature two pretty unique ways to flash the BIOS so one is just by loading the BIOS onto a USB stick plugging it into the back of the motherboard and then it just automatically flashes and then the other is the two separate BIOS chips which can be flashed with two different settings or they can be set with two different settings and you can flash from one to the other in order to actually maintain two completely different overclocking profiles like you could have one for 24/7 and then one for whenever you're you're doing some extreme benching or whatever and then you can automatically go back to your old one you've got a 3-way SLI bridge included you've also got a well I think this is that little Bluetooth thing yeah this is a Bluetooth module so comes with Bluetooth that's pretty cool then you've got whatever's in here which I will find out what it is for you okay we got a couple screws and then we got some bubbles and then we got a little fan okay now we'll have to find out what that hooks up to you can see it's like an anodized red heatsinks so that's probably what the heatsink on the motherboards finish is going to look like they've actually applied a proper thermal compound and a reasonable amount of it I'm really impressed to see that most modern motherboard manufacturers don't get that detail IO bracket with two USB and 1 eSATA then we've got one two three four five six seven eight SATA cables for our right angle for our straight we've got the rog connect USB cable then we've got an i/o shield we've got some zip ties we've got there oh this is good Pro belt that's another feature it includes so you've got little leads that you can plug into all of the voltage monitoring points on the motherboard to make it easier to plug in your multimeter you've got their two connectors one crossfire bridge and then one long SLI bridge we've got some temperature sensors and last but not least we have the rampage extreme user's guide with some labels for the SATA cables as well as the drivers and installation utilities DVD don't use that download the latest offices website then we have a Republic of gamers sticker so let's get all that back in there and let's get the motherboard out so one thing that stands out to me right away about this motherboard is while EVGA and gigabyte are tripping over themselves and each other to release motherboards that are not a standard ATX form factor as soos has opted to stick with the ATX design for this particular board you can see they've gone a little bit wider so it's more like an extended ATX than a standard ATX but they keep the standard 7 slots rather than making the board longer at the bottom and I really like this for a number of reasons the first of all the first of which is that it means it can fit in many more cases than these these non-standard boards and also if they put the engineering work into it and you can see that they have they've got the first PCI Express slot right at the top it means there's a lot of components packed in there but even with this standard ATX board you still get all the benefits of up to 4-way crossfire or four-way SLI these slots will run at 8 X 8 X 8 X 8 X and if you have a case like the Corsair obsidian 800 D that doesn't have an 8 slot but does have a vented port at the back you can actually install a dual slot card in here so you'll go to 2 2 & 2 so you can use a standard ATX board to get that extreme feature as long as you put the engineering work into it which is Zeus has why don't we start with the CP or rather move on to the CPU socket so it's a standard 1366 socket there's not much to say about it but they have included holes for 1366 as well as what appears to be 775 so if you have an old cooler and a lot of the extreme overclocking guys with their liquid nitrogen pots won't have newer Hart mounting hardware you can definitely use that to mount it there over here we have got 2 8 pin CPU connectors so that means that this through its digital PWM is able to pump a lot of juice into your processor you've got to be going pretty far over stock speeds for that to be a benefit but hey that's what this board is for we've got the clear CMOS button right here as well as one here so you've got one on the top of the board if you're using it on an open bench as well as one on the back panel very convenient thank you a soos for that then we've got our support for up to six dims so that's triple channel memory we have our onboard switches there's our start and reset and then we have little boy okay well I wish I knew what those do but please leave a comment if you know what these do they are on-off switches right here they are labeled switch one two switch four very cool okay oh this is interesting there's a liquid nitrogen mode up here and it appears to be the jumper right here so they've actually got a special liquid nitrogen profile for this board and I'm guessing what it does is it controls the the timing of the electrical signals for if the board is going to be really really cold okay here we've got our 24-pin connector in its ideal location and then we move down and we see our SATA connector so we have two SATA 6 gigabits per second connectors here rather yeah 2 SATA 6 gigabits per second and then 6 SATA 2 so say 2 3 gigabit per second connectors here then we have the bios switch right here we have one more SATA connector then we have our front panel connectors here are the two BIOS chips so all you have to do this is so cool is press the button and then you'll actually load one BIOS profile or the other one here is the plug-in for their OC station which is a dual five and a quarter inch Bay device that you can plug into the front of your case for some hardware overclocking next we've got and I like this this motherboard has all four pin PWM fan connectors no legacy 3 pin fan connectors and it has a ton of them one two three let me see let's just keep counting here I got four I've got five six seven seven fan connectors so you can load a ton of fans on here that's pretty cool next we have a molex connector at the bottom so this is to provide additional power there's actually two of them and I'm glad to see this one in a very sensible location here because usually you see a lot of bottom mounted power supplies these days and then there's one more up here so that's going to give you additional juice for your graphics cards if you're running for high powered cards in here let me see what else we've got there's your front panel audio connector as well as your BIOS battery and last but not least we've actually got one more clear CMOS jumper so you can do it the old-fashioned jumper way or you can hit either of the two switches up at the top of the board now let's have a look at the cooling solution now the x58 chipset as well as the ich10r southbridge they don't really run that hot it's not really necessary to throw a whole ton of cooling at them but if you yeah you know what that's basically it if you want to a soos has included an extra heatsink which you can see straps in right where this this piece comes off so you can leave it passive because you don't need all that cooling or you can throw an additional one on here and you can get that additional additional cooling if you want it if you're going to be pushing it even harder so that's a you know what the spacing actually looks right for Swift Tech's water block that can mount here as well so it looks like a soos has continued their tradition with their high-end Republic of gamers boards of allowing them to be water-cooled with a third party piece that's pretty neat as well and the cameraman is probably having a look at the like black angular heat sink I really like their new style and their Republic of gamers boards have been typically black and red they've done an exceptional job of making this board look like something you'd really want to put on display in a windowed case so why don't we have a look at the oh yeah let's have a look at the back of the board look at that so they've got the standard backplate for the CPU socket but they've also got a cooling heat spreader for the back of the pwms so that's something you see on the back of boards from time to time but not really all that often last but not least let's have a look at the i/o connectivity at the back so we've got a ps2 keyboard port we've got one two three four five six USB 2.0 ports this is not a true USB port that is the rog connect port so that can be used to flash the bios in that innovative new way you plug in the USB with the BIOS on it you'll hold this for two seconds and it flashes awesome next we have a clear CMOS switch here optical audio out eSATA firewire Gigabit Ethernet this is you know what this is one of those things again I have to comment on I'm so sick of seeing gaming motherboards with like - or I've seen up to four Ethernet connections on the back why gamers need one Fast Ethernet connection that's all so that's a yeah just random rant then we have two USB 3.0 ports as well as 7.1 audio thank you for checking out my unboxing and product overview of the much-awaited a soos rampage 3 extreme