ASUS Rampage IV Extreme LGA 2011 Motherboard Review @ [H]

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FrgMstr

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ASUS Rampage IV Extreme LGA 2011 Motherboard Review - ASUS expands its ROG line once again to include offerings based on Intel’s latest X79 chipset and support for the new Sandy Bridge-E processors. The ASUS Rampage IV Extreme comes from a long line of Rampage motherboards most of which have been excellent products. Our expectations are extremely high for this "Extreme" offering.
 
Great board but yeah it is pricey. What gpu's do you plan to move eventually too??
 
"and I expect to be getting rid of the power hungry GTX 580 SLI very soon as well."

hmmm, wonder what new videocard that might be???!!! ;)
 
inglewood78 said:
"and I expect to be getting rid of the power hungry GTX 580 SLI very soon as well."

hmmm, wonder what new videocard that might be???!!! ;)
Click to expand...

Yeah I'd like to get rid of mine as well. Not because I don't like them or even because they are power hungry. I'd like to get rid of mine because keeping them cool is a chore sometimes. Ambient temperatures sometimes rise in my office higher than I'd like. This is due to the amount of equipment I've got in there I'm sure. Water cooling is getting to be a must for me at almost every turn in my gaming rigs these days. I'd probably go that route here but I can't justify spending the cash on the water blocks especially when new GPUs are practically right around the corner.
 
I also used to have SLI GTX 580's but I went down to just 1 card with the Asus Matrix GTX580, just stinks they did not make a 3GB model.
 
" LGA 1155 2600K processor end up in my new build. Sandy Bridge E just looks to be too hot and I expect to be getting rid of the power hungry GTX 580 SLI very soon as well"

Nice, I hope we get to read about it!
Do we see a 7K series Xfire setup in your future? (Looking at some of the other responses.... I probably shouldn't of had to ask considering the timing lol)

And.... What's happening to those 580's?? :p
 
AthlonXP said:
I also used to have SLI GTX 580's but I went down to just 1 card with the Asus Matrix GTX580, just stinks they did not make a 3GB model.
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I'd like to have seen that as well. I'd have loved to have had a pair of those in my rig.
 
I have this board and I have had no problems OCing at all, temps around the same as my 2600k @ 4.6-4.8GHz.

That said, I will be looking at investing in 3 x 7970's after the 9th of January and finding out if the PCI Express 3.0 is really doing to help that much.
 
sandy bridge e =/= ivy bridge right?

Any idea's when that is coming out?

I'm planning on getting a new build going with 2 7970's as soon as they come out, but if Ivy Bridge is still over 8 months away, I might as well go for the 2500K's
 
Your closing statements were pretty much spot on. I have the Sabertooth x79 and did about 12hr of folding @4.7ghz. The issue I had on this board was vrm temps in the 90's! Did you notice any temp issues other than cpu in your overclocking?
 
Funny that they say it's "too hot" yet my R4E and 3930k are idling right now at 29*C, it never goes above 50 on all 6 cores after hours of BF3.

*shrugs*

At first I was not a fan of X79, but the more I learned the R4E's potential and saw the build quality and features, it was a no brainer. 32GB of ram running a 12GB Ram Cache is incredible. Having PCIe 3.0 built in, 6 cores, etc. It's a fantastic upgrade from my X58 R3E build.
 
Appa said:
Funny that they say it's "too hot" yet my R4E and 3930k are idling right now at 29*C, it never goes above 50 on all 6 cores after hours of BF3.

*shrugs*

At first I was not a fan of X79, but the more I learned the R4E's potential and saw the build quality and features, it was a no brainer. 32GB of ram running a 12GB Ram Cache is incredible. Having PCIe 3.0 built in, 6 cores, etc. It's a fantastic upgrade from my X58 R3E build.
Click to expand...

Under full CPU load the CPUs do get pretty damned hot. Even BF3 doesn't load the CPU like load testing can. And is your system overclocked? At stock speeds they are fine even under heavy loads. At 4.6GHz+ I hit 82c+ on water cooling.
 
I didn't see anywhere where you mentioned the ASUS X-Socket features.

I'm waiting on the Rampage IV Formula to be released next week for my 3930K build.

I am particularly liking the X-Socket feature so that I can reuse my Heatkiller 3.0 on the CPU without needing any new hardware.
I'm hoping that I can OC the 3930K upwards to 4.6-4.7 GHz and keep the temps under control with my existing watercooling setup.:D
 
magoo said:
I didn't see anywhere where you mentioned the ASUS X-Socket features.

I'm waiting on the Rampage IV Formula to be released next week for my 3930K build.

I am particularly liking the X-Socket feature so that I can reuse my Heatkiller 3.0 on the CPU without needing any new hardware.
I'm hoping that I can OC the 3930K upwards to 4.6-4.7 GHz and keep the temps under control with my existing watercooling setup.:D
Click to expand...

I didn't mention it and probably should have. I didn't use any of the X-socket hardware that came with it. I have the proper mounting hardware for LGA2011 on my CPU-370 waterblock. A lot of motherboards over the years have provisions for using last generations mounting hardware / cooling solutions. It's cool that ASUS has done that in this case, but its not an earth shattering feature.
 
risqu3 said:
sandy bridge e =/= ivy bridge right?

Any idea's when that is coming out?

I'm planning on getting a new build going with 2 7970's as soon as they come out, but if Ivy Bridge is still over 8 months away, I might as well go for the 2500K's
Click to expand...

Yup. Ivy bridge is the 22nm shrink with a couple other goodies (not to mention, also getting tri-gate transistors while going to 22nm... really helps with heat given off and should allow for some more OC headroom).

Ivy is supposed to be hitting markets sometime in the Spring (Q2 2012). Don't waste your time with a 2500k, the 3570k/3770k are going to be tremendous chips (they're replacing the 2500k/2700k).

EDIT: have fun reading this!
 
Kranium said:
Your closing statements were pretty much spot on. I have the Sabertooth x79 and did about 12hr of folding @4.7ghz. The issue I had on this board was vrm temps in the 90's! Did you notice any temp issues other than cpu in your overclocking?
Click to expand...


This board was hot and needed some air flow over it, but it was not worse than anything I have seen with X58.
 
Kranium said:
Your closing statements were pretty much spot on. I have the Sabertooth x79 and did about 12hr of folding @4.7ghz. The issue I had on this board was vrm temps in the 90's! Did you notice any temp issues other than cpu in your overclocking?
Click to expand...

I've actually got a fan on my test bench which hits a lot of the VRM's but not all of them. In any case what I saw with heat was par for the course with other X79's and even earlier X58 boards.
 
Appa said:
Funny that they say it's "too hot" yet my R4E and 3930k are idling right now at 29*C, it never goes above 50 on all 6 cores after hours of BF3.

*shrugs*

At first I was not a fan of X79, but the more I learned the R4E's potential and saw the build quality and features, it was a no brainer. 32GB of ram running a 12GB Ram Cache is incredible. Having PCIe 3.0 built in, 6 cores, etc. It's a fantastic upgrade from my X58 R3E build.
Click to expand...


So basically you are doing nothing with it beyond using the memory footprint. Running a 12GB Ram Cache takes little to no wattage to make happen. And you are basically hardly using the abilities of the rest of the CPU.
 
Johnny_Utah said:
I have this board and I have had no problems OCing at all, temps around the same as my 2600k @ 4.6-4.8GHz.
Click to expand...


What does it look like beyond idle though? As mentioned I could load it for 20 hours at 4.6GHz, but 4.8GHz is a totally different story.
 
Dan_D said:
I'd also add to that; If you aren't overclocking the piss out of it, ASUS' Republic of Gamer's boards are really a waste of money.
Click to expand...

Exactly what I pointed out in the conclusion statement. There is a sub-$200 LGA 2011 MSI board out for sale now. Will review it soon.
 
Dan_D said:
Under full CPU load the CPUs do get pretty damned hot. Even BF3 doesn't load the CPU like load testing can. And is your system overclocked? At stock speeds they are fine even under heavy loads. At 4.6GHz+ I hit 82c+ on water cooling.
Click to expand...

What are you using/setting to hit that high with water? I was getting that before with some higher voltages and an h100 cooler but now I'm running an RX360+Raystorm setup now at 4.5Ghz with 1.31 vcore. Now I've been stressing it for about 6 hours and my max temps are about 63C. I have pushed to 5Ghz and played around for a bit but it was with some pretty high voltages so I've dropped back down to step up slowly.
 
code137 said:
What are you using/setting to hit that high with water? I was getting that before with some higher voltages and an h100 cooler but now I'm running an RX360+Raystorm setup now at 4.5Ghz with 1.31 vcore. Now I've been stressing it for about 6 hours and my max temps are about 63C. I have pushed to 5Ghz and played around for a bit but it was with some pretty high voltages so I've dropped back down to step up slowly.
Click to expand...


Dual rad rigs with CPU-370 water blocks. Only the CPU in the loop.

And I think we pointed out, 4.6 and 4.8 are two VERY different animals under load.

I can say without hesitation that "playing around at 5GHz" on the LGA 2011 and the H100 cooler was little more than clicking around on the desktop or very short usage of anything generating any kind of load.
 
I didn't go to 5 with the h100. I was using the new water cooling at that point and I did load it with prime but blue screened at around 20 minutes lol. Either way even though I own the board and processor now and plan to keep it, I do still agree with the article for the most part. I'll be doing lots of 1080p video processing and maybe I'll set it up to fold as well.

I did have the same issues with problems posting after certain overclocks but I never had to manually reset the cmos. It would hang for a bit then reset itself or post after a longer delay. I thought quite a few times that I was going to have to reset it and when I finally got up to do it I'd see the screen flash on.
 
Dan_D said:
This is exactly what I experienced as well. Up to 4.6GHz or so I can keep the temps around 66-65c under load and use only around 1.36v VCore. At 4.8GHz or higher, the amount of voltage needed and the heat generated by the CPU increase exponentially. To even get the system to boot at 4.8GHz I needed 1.5v VCore on the Rampage IV Extreme! :eek:

I don't think we will ever see clocks on the 3930K and 3960X which are comparable to what we see on 2500K / 2600K processors. The trade off if you need it is more cores at slower speeds. You guys who actually need or want this know you who are. Obviously it's a know brainer if you need more than 32GB of RAM as well, but again you probably know if you need this or not. Everyone else will probably be better served by LGA1155 setups.
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Wow, I must have a great chip! I run my 3930K at 4.8, details in sig below. My temps stay in low 70s fully loaded folding SMP. Apogee XT waterblock.
 
DooKey said:
Wow, I must have a great chip! I run my 3930K at 4.8, details in sig below. My temps stay in low 70s fully loaded folding SMP. Apogee XT waterblock.
Click to expand...

1.39v? Nice. So far the chip I've got won't do that on any board I've tried. I've got another one on the bench and I'll see what it can do over the next few days.
 
Dan_D said:
1.39v? Nice. So far the chip I've got won't do that on any board I've tried. I've got another one on the bench and I'll see what it can do over the next few days.
Click to expand...

Yeah, seems to be a good one. I think I'm pretty safe at 1.39 and low 70 temps loaded up.
 
DooKey said:
Yeah, seems to be a good one. I think I'm pretty safe at 1.39 and low 70 temps loaded up.
Click to expand...

I'd say that's pretty good. I've seen some LGA1155 CPUs and boards which needed more than 1.40v to get stable at 4.8GHz. So you definitely seem to have a very good chip on your hands.
 
I'm also a lucky one as well I guess. My 3960X runs 4.6Ghz @ 1.36v. 4.8Ghz @ 1.382v, and 5Ghz @ 1.44v. All of these are LinX stable over night, though I haven't tested longer than 14 hours.

The key to keeping heat production down is two fold. First is to control the VRM temps. This is critical. The VRM area gets VERY hot on these boards especially when you crank up the LLC. The VRM area becomes heat soaked quickly and this will not only throttle the mobo and drop the ratio, but it will bleed heat to the CPU and run up your temps. You can disable T Probe Thermal Management to prevent the VRM throttle, but I wouldn't recommend that for the average joe. That is somewhat risky and is meant for hardcore bench runs only IMO. To avoid throttling and heat soak, the better approach is to run the absolute lowest possible LLC settings and core voltages.

The second issue is to minimize the use of Vcore to overcome OC barriers. I avoided Vcore increases and instead adjjsted VTT and VCCSA voltages which proved very effective getting the chip to the next level. I also found that memory tweaks also helped a ton (such as the Rampage Tweak Mode 1, manually setting timings, and using hynix profiles). These adjustments allowed me to run much lower Vcore and lower LLC.


My 4.8Ghz settings:

Manual OC
Vcore @1.39v
VTT @ 1.32v
VCCSA @ 1.25v
Clock Gen Filter at 20UF (very important setting)
All cores Turbo
Ratio 48
Manual memory timings
Rampage Tweak Mode 1
Vdimm @ 1.67 both banks
LLC medium (NOT Auto)

Everything else on Auto.

I do have active cooling on each DIMM bank and a dedicated 60mm fan over the VRM north of the socket. With basic water (120.3 rad cooling CPU and 2 6970s) I see high 70s on load with LinX that has run for 14 hours (until I stopped it).

There are a few very good threads around the net that can help get the RIVE and SB-E systems overclocked nicely. Your review is accurate in that 4.6 is the "usual" wall until more settings are worked through. But many guys are now getting into the 4.8+ range once the right combination of settings is discovered.
 
I guess it's just the pressure of marketing, but I'm surprised Asus is producing an ROG board with the X79 chipset.

Given its lackluster OC performance, I would have thought they'd be better served limiting high-end X79 boards to their workstation and Sabertooth series.
ROG seems like a bad choice for a high-end X79 board.

They can't be unaware of the relatively low OC's and nothing else from the X79 is an improvement over the Sandy bridge with regard to gaming.
Of course, the lack of SAS support and lacking more than two SATA6G ports makes the X79 a disappointment for the WS crowd as well.

All in all, I wish motherboard manufactures would be brave enough to ignore chipsets that don't prove to be a significant step forward from the previous generation.
AMD, Intel and NVIDIA would sweat the details more if it wasn't a given that the motherboard and graphics manufacturers would automatically accept anything those three produced.
I feel the same when it comes to 16:9 vs. 16:10 aspect ratio monitors, but that's another subject.

Maybe it's just perception, but I feel like Intel has joined NVIDIA and AMD in using the consumer as their beta testers instead of getting thing locked down before releasing the chipsets to the motherboard makers.
I expect that out of NVIDIA and AMD, given their comparatively small R&D resources and, in NVIDIA's case, lack of their own foundry resources.
I don't expect that out of Intel.

On a related note, I would be interested in hearing from X79 users regarding whether or not the ability to use 64 GB of RAM add a significant real-usage advantage over the X58's limit of 24GB or even the P67's limit of 32GB.
 
i love my 3930k whit my asrock extreme 4. my system is 24 hours prime 95 stable at 4.8ghz 1.375 vcore. been folding on it for the past 4 days whit 0 bsod and temps are hottest core 54c. for 5ghz i need 1.425v core to get prime stable but i think that's unsafe volts even if load temps are low 60s? klye know any thing about the safe 24/7 v core for these chips?
 
Last edited:
(Editor's Note: I am about to personally embark on a new system build after Christmas. It has been over a year since I put together a fully new box. Like many of you, I was waiting to see what Bulldozer and Sandy Bridge E truly delivered to the hardware enthusiast and the gamer. Well, now we know, and I very much expect to see a LGA 1155 2600K processor end up in my new build. Sandy Bridge E just looks to be too hot and I expect to be getting rid of the power hungry GTX 580 SLI very soon as well.)

Thanks for the thorough review. One more reason to wait for Ivy Bridge. Will be interesting to see how their new tri-gate cpu's do out of the "gate" (pun intended). I don't mind waiting if it means a better product. Besides, have to pay for a couple of dental implants that will cost about the same as a new rig. (hrmm, decisions decisions.... Get a nice shiny smile or play games toothless? :D:D)
 
How are load temps and overclocking with hyperthreading disabled? Disabling HT on my i7-920 let me drop the voltage and temps tremendously.
 
DoubleParadoxx said:
How are load temps and overclocking with hyperthreading disabled? Disabling HT on my i7-920 let me drop the voltage and temps tremendously.
Click to expand...

I never tried disabling Hyperthreading. Seems kind of pointless given the market these things are generally intended for.
 
Dan_D said:
I never tried disabling Hyperthreading. Seems kind of pointless given the market these things are generally intended for.
Click to expand...
Actually disabling HT is a smart move for most people, as most games never go over 6 treads, of course if you do encoding, HT gives you a nice 30~50% speed bump.
But as long as you don't do F@H or encoding type of things, you don't really need HT.

And most people don't even know that Windows 7 dose Core Parking :D

full.png


Disabling Core Parking helped my fps in some games by about on my old i7 920 50%! :eek:
 
you know.....after reading this, i may wait until ivy bridge-e (socket 2011), my x58 is fine for now.
 
Dan_D said:
As much as I want to upgrade, it's hard to justify it over my current 980X setup.
Click to expand...
Actually the main reason for me, why i got the RE4, is to be able to use 64GB of system memory, to make a RAMDrive (HowTo Video)

I traded my i7 970 for a 3930K whit the old 3x water cooled 5870 2GB Matrix cards @1GHz, res 5760x1200.
In gaming i don't see mouths difference (0~15%, average below 10%, as i am still GPU bound), other then having lighting fast load times from the ramdisk i use.:D
Tho i hope 3 or 4 7970s will change that ;)

Working on the PC with a ramdisk on the other hand, is even greater then the change from a HDD to a PCI-E RevoDrive 3 X2, if data is on the ramdisk there are just no load times
 
Since the computer treats the RAMDrive as a disk drive would you be able to get around the 16GB memory limit of Windows 7 Home Premium by allocating everything above 16GB for a RAMDrive?

I'm guessing you can based on this:

Can RAMDisk use memory not available or seen by 32-bit Windows?

Dataram RAMDisk cannot make use of memory that is not available in 32-bit Windows systems between 3 and 4 GB. RAMDisk can use memory not "seen" by 32-bit Windows ABOVE 4 GB, i.e. 6 or 8 GB.
Click to expand...
 
Don't know as i am using Windows 7 Ultimate that has a limit of 192 GB, and i am still far from reaching that :(, but 64GB is a step in the right direction :D

But i think it would not be a problem, as you would not use it as system memory, and think windows only looks at that.

But Windows 7 Pro has the same limit as Ultimate, and is there not a upgrade program to step up from one version to a other.

But to get your Windows 7 (Ultimate) key dirt cheap ($44.99), i always buy OEM keys online at websites like these, they have a download version, and a version they mail on a on a USB stick.
 
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