description of the boardBox from top side is classic ROG, red color of big box with eATX board inside and information about model, bonus as OC Panel and support of operation systems, CPU and GPUs.
Back side of the box is more specific - the highlight features description and full specification + IO panel schema.
Half opened box :). You can watch at board in safe place, there are enxt information also...
Inside of the BOX is the motherboard and some big acessories. The motherboard is really looking great. I think, the most beautiful Rampage in history, maybe one of the greatest looking board ever.
The accessories is full of the box. There are many
- SATA cables
- SLI/CF bridges
- door tag
- stickers for cable description
- manual
- Wifi antenna
- X-socket (2011v3 to 1366)
- OC Panel cables
- OC Panel 🙂
- Q-connectors
The most important could be this. The X-socket help you, if your old cooler or LN2 pot not support 2011 socket. Of course, this is main problem for me with LN2 pot. Petri Korhonen is good guy:), but he could not know nothing about 2011 socket in year 2010 :-))). X-socket change your default 2011 bracket to the LGA1366 bracket. You are safe now.
WiFi modul at MB is with 3 antenas, support 802.11ac.
OC Panel
OC Panel is in basic mode HW monitoring and classic auto OC toy in your 5.25" position. But for extreme mode is nice thing. Connect it with motherboard (ROG extender) cable and play it (or update firmware). There are nice features as VGA Hotwires, 4x fan connectors, Slow mode switch and Pause switch. Both are helpfull with LN2 OC .
So take some minutes to the motherboard description. Its my favorite part 🙂The motherboard is eATX format. So the 30.5 cm x 27.2 cm big. Color scheme is red and black. The characteristic for ROG boards and its good. The power connectors are 8+4 pin for CPU and 24-pin ATX at the board. Light issue can be with CPU connectors, Il write about it at different paragraph. Design of pasives is awesome. Really, I like design of ROG many years and every year are good looking. At both side of CPU socket are 4 memory slots. So this CPU support Quadchannel settings (2+2 or 4+4). Be careful with choice of memor or aircooler. With high pasives DRAMs you can have issues with your cooler. But of course, you can buy some new as Noctua NHD15 - this is ready for high RAM modules...I must did small mode :). The motherboard support 64/128 GB DDR4 up to 3300 MHz OC.
The motherboard has 3 desing pasives. One PCH, big size, but not tall. The VRM pasive which is cooling mosfets IR directly. There is realy direct contact with VRM! So more effective in cooling. The last part is over IO part and separates heatpipe from DRAM area. The motherboard has 5x PCIe slots. More about PCIe slots I write later...Motherboard has great conectivity in SATA ports, USB 3.0, M.2 and SATA Express. Again more words coming in different part of review.
Backside of the motherboard is classic in ROG. They dont forget at coold down the backside of VRM. If you do not believe, try cool your old board from back side with some air 120mm fan and you can see little differents in OC potential and temps.
There are PCIe slots. In first chapter I said, number of PCIe 3.0 lines depends at CPU. Remember it. The red slots are directly to CPU, the black are to PCH (so 2.0 mode). The reds are x16, but primary slot is the first one. For SLI/CF with two GPUs you can use 1+3 red slots. Your GPUs will working both in x16 mode! Would like use more cards? No problem. Three cards will working as 16+8+8 with all X99 CPUs. Four cards as 16+8+8+8 (only for 5930K and 5960x). Be aware the 4th red slot is share the lines with M.2. So if you using M2 at X4, the last red slot will be working only in x4 mode.
At the motherboard are long black x16 (working at x4 max) slot and short one x1. These are from PCH and of course 2.0 standard. Both slots are sharing x4 lines. These x4 lines are sharing not only with PCIe long and short black, but with SATA Express and added USB 3.0 too (two USB ports under LAN connector).
Your M.2 can be now very, very long and with good capacity :). You can find in lenght 2260/2280/22110 (last 3 chars are lenght in mm). Of course, M.2 PCIe x4 :).
More about M.2 SSD hereThere is SATA part. You can see 8x SATA 6GB/s ( working Raid 0, 1, 5, 10) and next dual SATA Express conectors. If you do not use this Sata Express, you have next four SATA 6GB/s. Of course, in this time is hard to find some SATA Express devices in shops. AT right of photo is USB 3.0 port for two front USB3 connectors, example at front the case.
The back IO conectivity is great. You can see from left to right: BIOS flashback button/CLR CMOS, ROG Connect button, PS2+2x USB2.0 (ideal for keyboard/mouse), 10x USB 3.0, LAN Gigabit conector, WIFI/BT module (Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac + Bluetooth v4.0) and audio outputs.
The bottom line of MB is fitted in front audio, EZ molex connector, TPM header, small T-sensor connector, soundstage button, two BIOS chips, USB 3.0 port, 2x fan connector PWM/DC, USB 2.0 port, ROG Extendor connector (For OC Panel/Frontbase panel etc), case connectors and red button for BIOS 1/2 switch.
Now is time for easy description of board. I was lazzy to removed heatsinks, but most of important is to see in theory screen in first post and its logical. Some chips are under big PCH heatsink and maybe some part for PCH power.
The red color area means CPU power suply. Its 8x digital controling phases with IR3555M powerpack mos, Nichicon caps and new microfine alloy chokes. The MB main controller is near the first DRAM DIMs, colored in pink. Second area in blue color is digi power for DRAMs. There are two areas with separate controllers. One DRAM power area = 2 phases. Again with pink colored controllers :). And of course, there must be power for PCH - in yellow area color. Yeallow highlighted oblongs are PWM/DC connectors for CPU/chassis fans. Green areas are CPU 8-pin power and 24-pin ATX for MB power. You can see red and blue arrows, red arrows means PCIe lines from CPU and blue from PCH. I forgot marked for PCIe x1 from PCH.Some details of the motherboard and chipsThe layout of the motherboard is great. I have no objections as user. Only there is little, little issue. Where?
The CPU Power connectors are very close to the heatsink. With classic PSU connector you will very tight to the heatsink. You must put it inside with caution.
Inside of OC socket
🙂In the corners of LGA2011v3 LGA are extra pins for more power and few grounds pins. These pins helping in more stable OC during hardload and for extra MHz in memory and cache frequency.
Who knows me, knows me ;)....AMD 3000+, AMD x2 4600+ EE, AMD X4 955 BE C2,2x AMD X4 965 BE C3, AMD X4 970 BE C3, AMD x4 975 BE, AMD x4 980 BE, AMD X6 1090T BE, AMD x6 1100T BE, 2x AMD FX-8120, 2x AMD FX-8150, FX-6300, FX-8300, FX-8320E, FX-8320, FX-8350, FX-8370, FX-8370E, FX-9370, FX-9590, AMD A8-3850, AMD A8-3870K, A8-5600K, A10-5800K, A10-6800K, A10-7850K, A10-7870K, A 5150, Athlon x4 860K, Intel i7-5960X, i7-6700K, Intel i7-4770K, Intel i7-980x, Intel i7 2600k, Intel i7-3770K, i7-3930K.