Asus - Rampage Gene II

Asus's latest motherboard supporting intel's high-end core i7 engineering is one that will genuinely astonish a fate of people ,  as the rampage ii gene is built on a microatx pcb. yes that's right ,  here is a small motherboard that people won't be scoffing at ,  altho they might apparently cough at the 200 quid price tag it carries.

The rampage ii gene is part of Asus's republic of gamers (rog) product line ,  which means it is probably the most feature-rich microatx board you might ever come across.

Indeed ,  it's impressive the amount of features Asus has built into this board without the pcb appearing cluttered. that's not easy when you consider the size of the socket 1366 ,  six dimm slots (supporting up to 24gb of ddr3-2000/1800/1600 via overclocking and 1333) ,  two full-speed x16 pci-e graphics card slots and seven sata 3gb/s ports.

The dimm slots have a new locking system with latches apparently on one end ,  the ends nearest the graphics card slots having no latch to earn in the way of any graphics card. this means that these dimm slots may be placed nearer the x16 pci-e slots ,  saving a grain of space. the system works genuinely amply ,  the memory modules being held firmly in place.

Both the x58 northbridge and the ich10r southbridge are passively cooled ,  as are the mosfets ,  but whereas the northbridge cooler and mosfet heatsinks are linked ,  the southbridge one sits on its have.

Intel's x58 chipset supports both crossfire and sli technologies and certain sufficient Asus supplies two x16 slots for either setup - impressive for such a small board - but the drawback is that if you utilize two dual-height cards you will loose access to the single x1 pci-e and popular pci slots.

Intel's allusion specification for the x58 got rid of ide abet which is annoying if you have an ata interfaced optical drive ,  but Asus has put back an ata port on the rampage ii gene ,  altho its positioning is ungainly as it sits in between the 24-pin atx might connector and one of the memory slots.

Six of the seven sata ports are mounted on the brim of the board at ninety degrees ,  which helps with tidy cable runs ,  and all six are controlled by the raid-enabled ich10r southbridge. the seventh sits apparently inside these on the board and is controlled by a separate chip.

As this is a republic of gamers board you should suppose to see some special features and they appear in the contour of integrated eight-channel audio courtesy of creative's supremefx x-fi audio chip; more upmarket than your everyday integrated motherboard audio.

Meanwhile ,  the backside brim of the board is domestic to a immense red begin button ,  and reset and memok buttons which will please enthusiasts who utilize their boards out of a case or don't bother with case side panels. more to these there is a useful 'clear cmos' button on the rear i/o panel which saves messing about with fiddly jumpers on the board itself.

Asus's rampage ii gene is the first microatx board we have seen that supports intel's high-end cpu and linked chipset ,  and it require To be said it's the most feature-rich small board we have seen too. the apparently thing missing is perhaps an onboard hdmi port which would apparently add to what is already a fair imposing price tag.