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hi there i am a frequent user of this site .......
i just wanted to know whether any of you do have any idea regarding ASUS X48 Rampage Extreme Motherboard?
As this motherboard is new in the market, i don't know about it ........
so please provide some views regarding this motherboard....
ASUS X48 Rampage Extreme Motherboard
ASUS motherboard has everything that you want which includes terrific audio, blazing speed, lots of I/O ports, and tons of extra connectivity options.
The board comes with liquid cooling for the northbridge. People who are more interested in air cooling, you have the option of replacing the onboard water block with a fin-heavy air cooler and also an optional fan.
Similarly on the board you have a number of buttons. This is the tweaker's dream panel. It contains power and reset buttons, a joystick-like mode changer, a confirm button and a toggle button.
TweakIt works with the LCD Poster, a wired readout console that you can plop anywhere that tells you what's going on with the PC during boot and when you're using TweakIT.
Technical Specification:
Northbridge: Intel X48
Southbridge: Intel ICH9R
Memory DDR3: upto 2000
Expansion: 2 PCI Express X16 slots, full speed; 3 PCI Express X1 slots (one for the X-Fi audio device); 2 PCI slots
Storage: ICH9 SATA 3.0GB/s ports; 2 Silicon Image SIL5723 SATA 3.0GB/s ports; Marvell 88SE6121 PATA and eSATA ports
LAN: Dual Gigabit
Back panel I/O: 1 PS/2 keyboard port; 6 USB 2.0 ports; 1 IEEE1394a port; 1 clear CMOS switch; 1 eSATA port; 2 RK45 LAN ports
Internal I/O: 3 USB connectors for up to 6 more ports; Floppy port; IDE port; 6 SATA connectors; 2 Speeding HDD SATA connectors; 8 fan connectors power connectors; etc.
Accessories: Thermal Kit for Northbridge and MOS; SupremeFX X-Fi card; LCD Poster; small fan for thermal kit; cables, including thermal sensor cables
Software: Drivers; ASUS PC Probe II; ASUS Update; ASUS AI Suite; SoundBlaster utility; Kapersky Antivirus software.
Many different stuff, more mundane, like chassis intrusion detection, CrossFireX support, an onboard IEEE1394a port, an expansion bracket with two USB, and one IEEE1394a port on it.
Various Overclocking Features:
TweakIT
Intelligent Overclocking Tools like CPU Level Up; Overheat protection; OC profile saving; and a hearty BIOS with a backup that helpsyou to manage if you screw up the default one.
Speeding HDD is a high-speed hard drive interface that, makes little fnatacizing difference for real world consumer's. It consists a pair of SATA hard drives connected to the Silicon Image SATA ports. Time constraints prevented us from testing this feature with benchmarks.
Component Overheat Protection-EX (COP-EX) is just prevents overclocked components from killing themselves with an abundance of heat.
Other familiar features, like ASUS OC Profile, EZ-Flash, and many more make their expected appearances.
The board even comes with water cooling fittings for its default Fusion Block northbridge cooler.
Let me provide you with Overclocking information:
During the test carried in the market, Rampage Extreme was set with a speedy-but-stubborn Core 2 Quad Q9300. It was using air cooling in the form of an Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro.
The BIOS setup program is exactly what you expect for overclocking criteria and to add of a lot more. The Extreme Tweaker page, the overclocking page, will be the welcome page as you enter the BIOS setting Page.
The first step is CPU Level Up, a well known way to overclock. The BIOS detects your CPU and then offers to mimic the specifications of higher-end CPUs.
The AI Overclock Tuner, with a number of of options that set the stage for your overclocking efforts. The CPU Configuration page provides you set of required CPU ratio. There is a CPU Clock Skew option which lets you set a wait state crietria for the CPU that.
You can set the memory frequency and timing right from this menu. The memory level goes upto to 1600MHz, and tweaking the FSB frequency was up to over 400.
The tools helps to managed to overclock this motherboard at 2.5GHz Q9300 up to 3.05GHz on air alone, and the memory to 1600MHz.
TweakIt requires to connect with the small, wired LCD that also comes with the board. Thus controlling overclocking options on the fly with the buttons provided on the motherboard. Perhaps Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit is a little sensitive to having its various frequencies jerked around while it's thinking about stuff.
General Features:
- Case: Antec P182
- PSU: PC Power and Cooling 800W
- Memory: Super Talent W1866UX2GB DDR3-1866 GHz
- Graphics: ATI Radeon HD 3780 X2
- Audio: Included X-Fi Motherboard Codec
- Hard Drive: Seagate ST3320620AS SATA-II 7200.10 320GB
- Optical Drive: Generic DVD+/-RW
- OS: Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit SP1
My View on ASUS X48:
It's a stable board and does not hang till you perform correctly. It's full of extras. It has ports galore. And it features more overclocking control than I have seen in a long time.
On the other hand, even overclocking a high-end chip didn't make a massive difference in gaming.
So the end result is that the value of the Rampage Extreme is up to you. You can get boards just as stable at a quarter of the price, but they don't flaunt the bevy of features or the overclocking prowess that the Rampage does. Whether you really need all that stuff is your decision.
Tons of features, lots of extra stuff, very stable, and the overclocking controls are unmatched.
It's probably one of the best X48 motherboards on the market.