Rampage VI Extreme (LGA2066, Intel X299) - info, experience, BIOSes etc.

[DragonPurr]

Newegg had them in stock for all about 5 minutes before they were sold out. Missed out on one!!!

So did you actually see the [Add To Cart] button on the Newegg R6E listing and then the button switched to [Auto Notify] 5 minutes later, or was the "about 5 minutes" just a figurative manner of speech based on you receiving a Newegg Auto-Notify email 5 minutes before checking their website and seeing it was not available?

The reason I asked if you checked the Newegg site "about 5 minutes" after you received their Auto-Notify email is because, ever since about April or May, Newegg's Auto-Notify FREQUENTLY DOES NOT WORK. Sometimes, you might receive your Auto-Notify email within a few minutes of the product being switched to a [Add To Cart] button. But what happens more often is that their Auto-Notify email gets sent out 1, 6, or even 12+ hours after the product was back in-stock. So by the time that you received the email and checked their website, the product has already been sold out again, and the product was actually in-stock many hours before you received your Auto-Notify email alert. Or sometimes you will see that the product is listed on their website in an out-of-stock Auto-Notify state, and then when you check the product listing one or two days later, it is now in-stock with an [Add To Cart] button, but your Auto-Notify request is still pending and the in-stock "event" never triggered an email to you at all, as if it was in a stuck state.

Newegg's Auto-Notify emails previously used to always work fast and reliably all last year and up to about March of this year. But since April, it no longer works reliably or promptly to send you an email alert, and sometimes it remains stuck and does not work at all. I complained about this to more than five different Newegg customer service reps in April and May, and they still have not fixed the problem, which could be due to the website software or OS not processing event handlers and database triggers correctly, or due to outbound emails getting backlogged. This past Monday, while checking on the HCC i9 shipments and speaking to both a Newegg customer service rep and product manager, the CS rep said that Auto-Notify also often does not work for him, and the product manager admitted it was buggy, and I complained again that they should fix whatever is stalling their email alerts, and I told him that their [Auto-Notify] button is sometimes quite useless right now for new products that sell out quickly.

TL;DR: Don't rely on Newegg's Auto-Notify email alerts. If you want the R6E (or any Auto-Notify'ed new and popular product release) sooner from Newegg, you have to keep checking their site yourself.

[mpoffo]

So did you actually see the [Add To Cart] button on the Newegg R6E listing and then the button switched to [Auto Notify] 5 minutes later, or was the "about 5 minutes" just a figurative manner of speech based on you receiving a Newegg Auto-Notify email 5 minutes before checking their website and seeing it was not available?

The reason I asked if you checked the Newegg site "about 5 minutes" after you received their Auto-Notify email is because, ever since about April or May, Newegg's Auto-Notify FREQUENTLY DOES NOT WORK. Sometimes, you might receive your Auto-Notify email within a few minutes of the product being switched to a [Add To Cart] button. But what happens more often is that their Auto-Notify email gets sent out 1, 6, or even 12+ hours after the product was back in-stock. So by the time that you received the email and checked their website, the product has already been sold out again, and the product was actually in-stock many hours before you received your Auto-Notify email alert. Or sometimes you will see that the product is listed on their website in an out-of-stock Auto-Notify state, and then when you check the product listing one or two days later, it is now in-stock with an [Add To Cart] button, but your Auto-Notify request is still pending and the in-stock "event" never triggered an email to you at all, as if it was in a stuck state.

Newegg's Auto-Notify emails previously used to always work fast and reliably all last year and up to about March of this year. But since April, it no longer works reliably or promptly to send you an email alert, and sometimes it remains stuck and does not work at all. I complained about this to more than five different Newegg customer service reps in April and May, and they still have not fixed the problem, which could be due to the website software or OS not processing event handlers and database triggers correctly, or due to outbound emails getting backlogged. This past Monday, while checking on the HCC i9 shipments and speaking to both a Newegg customer service rep and product manager, the CS rep said that Auto-Notify also often does not work for him, and the product manager admitted it was buggy, and I complained again that they should fix whatever is stalling their email alerts, and I told him that their [Auto-Notify] button is sometimes quite useless right now for new products that sell out quickly.

TL;DR: Don't rely on Newegg's Auto-Notify email alerts. If you want the R6E (or any Auto-Notify'ed new and popular product release) sooner from Newegg, you have to keep checking their site yourself.

Very good advice. I do not rely on any notification from online retailers. I never got one from Amazon either and I signed up for that. Luckily I was able to get one from Newegg. A word used previously in this thread sums up the behavior you need to exhibit in order to snag one of these right now:

"Anorak" /ˈænəræk/ is a British slang which refers to a person who has a very strong interest, perhaps obsessive, in niche subjects. This interest may be unacknowledged or not understood by the general public. The term is sometimes used synonymously with "geek" or "nerd", or the Japanese term "otaku", albeit referring to different niches.

So be "anoraky" about checking those site that carry the board.

[DragonPurr]

Very good advice. I do not rely on any notification from online retailers. I never got one from Amazon either and I signed up for that. Luckily I was able to get one from Newegg. A word used previously in this thread sums up the behavior you need to exhibit in order to snag one of these right now:

"Anorak" /ˈænəræk/ is a British slang which refers to a person who has a very strong interest, perhaps obsessive, in niche subjects. This interest may be unacknowledged or not understood by the general public. The term is sometimes used synonymously with "geek" or "nerd", or the Japanese term "otaku", albeit referring to different niches.

So be "anoraky" about checking those site that carry the board.

Email delays can be very annoying, both when you are trying to buy something or if your personal emails are getting delayed. From 1996 to 2002, I was running 8 websites that were hosted by a company called WebCom (Web Communications). WebCom was one of the first companies during the mid-1990s to provide DIY Web sites for people, where you were given a Windows or UNIX Web host to set up yourself, like what HostGator, GoDaddy, and many others do now. WebCom was very good and trouble-free for many years, but then my inbound emails on their SMTP servers started to get delayed by many hours, sometimes delayed more than 6 to 10 hours. So after having this repeatedly happen for more than one year and repeatedly complaining, I switched companies and moved my websites onto another hosting company. WebCom's Web-hosting business later declined and they were acquired by Verio.

[red773]

Anyone back order the 7980XE on NewEgg? Curious what date they give you as an ETA. I ordered one from ProVantage and they say October 20 as an ETA and B&H says October 23 as their ETA.

[DragonPurr]

Anyone back order the 7980XE on NewEgg? Curious what date they give you as an ETA. I ordered one from ProVantage and they say October 20 as an ETA and B&H says October 23 as their ETA.

When Newegg initially added the [Back Order] button for all three HCC i9s on Monday, they were all listed as "Usually ships within 10 to 20 days", without giving a specific ETA. If you back-ordered from Newegg, your back-order will still say "within 10 or 20 days" and they will not provide an ETA yet because they have not received confirmation of shipments headed to their warehouse. However, when I phoned Newegg on Monday morning and talked to a product manager there, he told me that the 7940X and 7960X orders will likely arrive sooner, as early as next week, or by mid-Oct at the latest. I back-ordered the 7940X and he told me there were three small shipments coming in for the 7940X, with "small" meaning up to 20 in each of the three orders that the product manager placed. Other Newegg product managers may have placed more 7940X orders.

I did not ask how many shipments were coming for the 7960X and 7980XE. But he told me that the 7980XE may arrive later than the 7940X and 7960X, by mid to late Oct, at the latest. Newegg has since changed their [Back Order] button for the 7980XE to their buggy out-of-stock [Auto Notify] button, which means that all expected 7980XE units from the initial shipments have already been back-order-claimed. And if the actual shipments turn out to be smaller than what was ordered, a 7980XE Newegg back-order may not be shipped until Nov. Newegg still has the [Back Order] button for the 7940X and 7960X, so I presume that demand has not yet exceeded their expected shipments for those two CPUs.

Newegg usually receives new releases of CPUs and mobos sooner than Amazon, and both Newegg and Amazon get new CPUs and mobos both sooner and in larger quantities than B&H and smaller retailers like Provantage. So if what the Newegg manager said about the 7980XE arriving in mid-Oct or later is true, I am guessing that both Provantage and B&H are possibly too optimistic with their ETA dates. For example, Newegg was the first U.S. retailer to sell the R6E on Sep 14, and I think they received at least 100 or 150 mobos since it still took more than three hours to completely sell out. To me, a product or concert tickets rapidly selling out happens in less than one hour.

[SteveCole]

I just got my R6E board today and I have a question for those who have already got theirs and unboxed it. The only thing that seemed odd to me was the box didn't have any kind of seal on it. No tape or anything closing or sealing the box so you can tell if it's been opened or not. There's not even the marks of any tapes that may have been removed. Looks like that's the way it's packaged. Anyone can literally open it, check it out or touch the board etc and close it.

The plastic cover is intact there, no bent pins and board is in great shape though. The outside of the box also didn't look like polished clean, more kinda gathered some dust.

[DragonPurr]

I just got my R6E board today and I have a question for those who have already got theirs and unboxed it. The only thing that seemed odd to me was the box didn't have any kind of seal on it. No tape or anything closing or sealing the box so you can tell if it's been opened or not. There's not even the marks of any tapes that may have been removed. Looks like that's the way it's packaged. Anyone can literally open it, check it out or touch the board etc and close it.

The plastic cover is intact there, no bent pins and board is in great shape though. The outside of the box also didn't look like polished clean, more kinda gathered some dust.

NONE of the mobo companies use a security seal on their mobo boxes and bags. So, yes, you cannot tell if an unscrupulous retailer is selling a used mobo. Asus, MSI, Gigabyte, ASRock all do not use security seals and tapes on their mobo packaging, AFAIK.

And all of the R6E mobos and boxes look quite old, as if Asus modified the already-manufactured-and-ready-to-ship R6E mobos with upgraded VRM heatsinks back in July, but then all the boxes just sat idle throughout Aug and Sep, which I have been guessing was due to Intel asking Asus to delay the R6E release so it was released closer to the HCC i9 releases to encourage more sales of those pricier CPUs.

Don't be surprised if you even see a few fingerprints on your mobo, because Asus likely went back and opened up ready-to-ship mobo boxes to upgrade the VRM heatsink.

[Raja@ASUS]

And all of the R6E mobos and boxes look quite old, as if Asus modified the already-manufactured-and-ready-to-ship R6E mobos with upgraded VRM heatsinks back in July, but then all the boxes just sat idle throughout Aug and Sep, which I have been guessing was due to Intel asking Asus to delay the R6E release so it was released closer to the HCC i9 releases to encourage more sales of those pricier CPUs.

Intel never asked us to that. The delay was caused by us needing to revise the armor a few times to get it right. By the time that was all done, we were close enough tot he HCC release that it made sense to align with it. Don't read into it any deeper than that.

[DragonPurr]

Intel never asked us to that. The delay was caused by us needing to revise the armor a few times to get it right. By the time that was all done, we were close enough tot he HCC release that it made sense to align with it. Don't read into it any deeper than that.

Thank you for the reply, Raja!!!!

It was just that you never replied back with specific explanations to all the previous "when" and "why" release date inquiries that many people made on this thread in July and August, so we all wondered and speculated for two months.

I did notice that you previously mentioned the armor was having "low yields" and Kris Huang mentioned in the KitGuru video that the armor was the cause of the delay. I am also glad that it seemed like Asus increased the armor's trace line RGB lighting intensity compared to the mobo that was displayed at Computex.

[smithkid]

Thank you for the reply, Raja!!!!

It was just that you never replied back with specific explanations to all the previous "when" and "why" release date inquiries that many people made on this thread in July and August, so we all wondered and speculated for two months.

I did notice that you previously mentioned the armor was having "low yields" and Kris Huang mentioned in the KitGuru video that the armor was the cause of the delay. I am also glad that it seemed like Asus increased the armor's trace line RGB lighting intensity compared to the mobo that was displayed at Computex.

Seems like those guys in New Zealand never got the "delay" note or didn't read it.