ASUS Rampage V Extreme 10 Motherboard Review @ [H]

[FrgMstr]

ASUS Rampage V Extreme 10 Motherboard Review - ASUS celebrates the 10th anniversary of its Republic of Gamers brand in style with the new Rampage V Extreme 10! To properly commemorate its decade of innovation, this motherboard needs to be nothing short of the best motherboard ASUS has ever built and a worthy successor to the Rampage name.

 

[ThisMonsterLives]

Nice review and impressive board. Do I win one for being the first post?

 

[FrgMstr]

Nice review and impressive board. Do I win one for being the first post?

I think first post has the number "1" on it. So I guess I win.

 

[pcgeekesq]

I use the inner sliding portion of an old wooden slide rule from the 1940's to push the PCI-Express release buttons on my motherboards, but I image a paint-mixing stick would work too, although with a lot less geek style.

 

[Azrak]

I want this board badly. But I don't need it.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Jesus Christ that's a lot of SATA and other drive ports!

I could imagine those being useful on a storage server, but if you are building a server, shouldn't you be buying a server motherboard?

I currently only have six SATA ports, and I'm using none of them I only ave one drive in my box, and it's a PCIe SSD.

I'm disappointed by the continuing trend of adding "ground effects" to computer components. LED's in a computer are needless, distracting as they light up a dark room, and quite frankly look dumb. I guess it's not a big deal when they can be turned off, but I'd still be annoyed by the extra complexity and cost of something I'd never use.

Then again, I don't even get the point of case windows. To me a good PC is one that hides completely unnoticed under my desk. I want it to be silent and have no lights (well, functional lights like a power led, a drive led, and Ethernet link/activity lights are OK, as long as they aren't too bright). I want the performance, on screen to be the impressive part.

I hope Asus continues the WS trim in their lineup. I love my P9X79 WS. All function, no nonsense. Great overclocker too!

 

[Streiw]

Jesus Christ that's a lot of SATA and other drive ports!

I could imagine those being useful on a storage server, but if you are building a server, shouldn't you be buying a server motherboard?

I currently only have six SATA ports, and I'm using none of them I only ave one drive in my box, and it's a PCIe SSD.

I'm disappointed by the continuing trend of adding "ground effects" to computer components. LED's in a computer are needless, distracting as they light up a dark room, and quite frankly look dumb. I guess it's not a big deal when they can be turned off, but I'd still be annoyed by the extra complexity and cost of something I'd never use.

Then again, I don't even get the point of case windows. To me a good PC is one that hides completely unnoticed under my desk. I want it to be silent and have no lights (well, functional lights like a power led, a drive led, and Ethernet link/activity lights are OK, as long as they aren't too bright). I want the performance, on screen to be the impressive part.

I hope Asus continues the WS trim in their lineup. I love my P9X79 WS. All function, no nonsense. Great overclocker too!

When you're selling a $600 motherboard, you tend to throw a bunch of unnecessary shit on it to justify the price. This motherboard is soley for e-peen

 

[STrAYeR]

Been hearing stories of how Asus keeps raising prices but quality seems to be going down. Asus also seems to be very cocky. Hey look at these fancy led's on a 200 dollars board let's charge 750 bucks. I will be switching to another company. Asus is getting on my nerves these days.

 

[lolfail9001]

Been hearing stories of how Asus keeps raising prices but quality seems to be going down. Asus also seems to be very cocky. Hey look at these fancy led's on a 200 dollars board let's charge 750 bucks. I will be switching to another company. Asus is getting on my nerves these days.

I mean, something tells me audio codec in this thing alone is $200 material.

 

[AK0tA]

Fancy board yes but I just don't see paying $600 for this. For $600 it had better make me coffee and have a built in rolling machine.

 

[shinotenshi]

kyle is this board ~$200 better than the Gigabyte Designare EX mobo?

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

I mean, it is nice to see a board with Intel NIC's and better than Realtek audio. I wish more boards had this.

$600 is steep though, and it is unclear if there is any real benefit to a higher end audio like this, if it is still sitting inside the computer in its electrically noisy environment.

External DAC's (preferrably optical via SPDIF) are the holy grail when it comes to computer audio.

I really don't get the wifi though.

You don't overspend on a $600 motherboard to build an enthusiast rig only to handicap it by using wifi...

In my ideal world, there would be absolutely nothing on board. No NIC's, no sound, no SATA, nothing. (well maybe USB)

Instead give me all the PCIe lanes. Use PCIe switching to make me be able to configure how many lanes I want to each slot in the BIOS and let me install all my own hardware.

Might need a few more slots than in current ATX form factors though

 

[Dullard]

I have the vanilla RVE, it has wifi, I've never used it. Pretty sure this one will have an ethernet socket on it, too.

 

[ecktt]

I mean, it is nice to see a board with Intel NIC's and better than Realtek audio. I wish more boards had this.

$600 is steep though, and it is unclear if there is any real benefit to a higher end audio like this, if it is still sitting inside the computer in its electrically noisy environment.

External DAC's (preferrably optical via SPDIF) are the holy grail when it comes to computer audio.

I really don't get the wifi though.

You don't overspend on a $600 motherboard to build an enthusiast rig only to handicap it by using wifi...

In my ideal world, there would be absolutely nothing on board. No NIC's, no sound, no SATA, nothing. (well maybe USB)

Instead give me all the PCIe lanes. Use PCIe switching to make me be able to configure how many lanes I want to each slot in the BIOS and let me install all my own hardware.

Might need a few more slots than in current ATX form factors though

Ditto.

My 2¢.
I can't be the only one that sees very specific problems with Asus motherboards. Asus isn't even a popular brand here because of the high price, lack of local support and what support we do get, is in espanol (spanish), so when I do get a Ausu motherboard in a computer on my workbench and alomost like clockwork, has a standard quirk, I'm amazed at review sites loving them. At $600USD......yeah it OC easy but Whiskey Tango Foxtrot. A quick search brings up workstation/server motherboards with more features (dual socket, dual 10GB LAN, real multiple PCIE 3.0 x16 slots, etc) for less. This one of those product that makes no real world sense.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Ditto.

My 2¢.
I can't be the only one that sees very specific problems with Asus motherboards. Asus isn't even a popular brand here because of the high price, lack of local support and what support we do get, is in espanol (spanish), so when I do get a Ausu motherboard in a computer on my workbench and alomost like clockwork, has a standard quirk, I'm amazed at review sites loving them. At $600USD......yeah it OC easy but Whiskey Tango Foxtrot. A quick search brings up workstation/server motherboards with more features (dual socket, dual 10GB LAN, real multiple PCIE 3.0 x16 slots, etc) for less. This one of those product that makes no real world sense.

Where is "here"?

 

[dolkeng]

I think your Wireless problems comes from the fact that some Broadcom drivers are wonky as hell. The Broadcom chipset used in the Asus Rampage V Edition 10 is the BCM4360 (According to this review at least: ua.gecid.com/mboard/asus_rog_rampage_v_edition_10/?s=all), which is found in Asus PCE-AC68 and some other newer Asus motherboards. It's a good wireless chipset that does what it's supposed to do but only if you have the appropriate drivers. Some of them are like I said really wonky.

Here's a snbforums thread about the Asus PCE-AC68 and the problems people have had with Broadcom BCM4360 drivers: snbforums.com/threads/pce-ac68-windows-10-drivers.26208

And here's a link to a place where you can download the actual Broadcom drivers themselves instead of being forced to use whatever Asus puts on the download page: station-drivers.com/index.php?option=com_remository&Itemid=353&func=select&id=262&orderby=4&lang=fr

If you guys could do some further testing and see if any of this helps with your weird Wireless problems then that'd be great because I'm interested in upgrading to this motherboard from my Asus X99-E WS. And due to how my house is constructed I don't feel like laying down tons of Ethernet cables all over the place.

 

[darkxmen]

I would have to disagree with you about asus dominating, have you been on newegg lately, for the last 2 years their quality has gone way doen and so has their support. The last 2 asus boards have died on me or giving headaches, i use to love their motherboards now i just reminiscence of what they use to be top dog. Bring back Abit.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

I would have to disagree with you about asus dominating, have you been on newegg lately, for the last 2 years their quality has gone way doen and so has their support. The last 2 asus boards have died on me or giving headaches, i use to love their motherboards now i just reminiscence of what they use to be top dog. Bring back Abit.

I miss Abit too. Some of the best motherboards I've ever owned.

 

[eclypse]

Yes, id love to support Abit and 3DFX once again! Rise from the ashes!!!

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Yes, id love to support Abit and 3DFX once again! Rise from the ashes!!!

Well, if Abit were to come back now, it would be in name only. The talent and processes they had to make high quality boards have long since moved on.

That's not to say that you couldn't hire/build that talent and those processes again, but there's no guarantee such a business venture would do this. In fact, these days it seems more like when good old brand names are revived, they are done so poorly, and are a shell of their former selves, instead used to mass market shitty made in china junk,

 

[eclypse]

Actually back in the day on extreme systems forum I was the first to buy the dfi board and report how great the overclocking was and that brand took off from there!

Was like one of my only threads I started on a forum that really got up there in count! Lol

This was back when amd was kicking ass.

 

[Dan_D]

I mean, something tells me audio codec in this thing alone is $200 material.

I don't think you are all that far off. I think those same components on a dedicated audio card would probably retail for $200-$220.

Ditto.

My 2¢.
I can't be the only one that sees very specific problems with Asus motherboards. Asus isn't even a popular brand here because of the high price, lack of local support and what support we do get, is in espanol (spanish), so when I do get a Ausu motherboard in a computer on my workbench and alomost like clockwork, has a standard quirk, I'm amazed at review sites loving them. At $600USD......yeah it OC easy but Whiskey Tango Foxtrot. A quick search brings up workstation/server motherboards with more features (dual socket, dual 10GB LAN, real multiple PCIE 3.0 x16 slots, etc) for less. This one of those product that makes no real world sense.

What standard quirks are you talking about? I see a lot of ASUS motherboards and the only quirk they have that pisses me off isn't a quirk, but a stupid design decision. That is, ASUS motherboards always select the most recent storage device as the boot drive. Its irritating. GIGABYTE and MSI motherboards have their quirks as well. If anything, ASUS motherboards tend to be less quirky with the BIOS than other brands are. As for your take on dual socket motherboards, you are way off the mark. Server chipsets don't have more PCI-Express lanes than X99 chipsets do. In fact, the C612 chipset is basically the same thing as X99. Both have a mere 8x PCI-Express lanes. The bulk of the system's lanes come from the CPUs installed in the system, not from the chipset. Sure you can get dual socket motherboards for less in some cases, but they don't have the LED lighting, black PCB's, stylish MOSFET and chipset cooling, overclocking capability or a decent UEFI in most cases. You are comparing apples and fruitcakes here.

I think your Wireless problems comes from the fact that some Broadcom drivers are wonky as hell. The Broadcom chipset used in the Asus Rampage V Edition 10 is the BCM4360 (According to this review at least: ua.gecid.com/mboard/asus_rog_rampage_v_edition_10/?s=all), which is found in Asus PCE-AC68 and some other newer Asus motherboards. It's a good wireless chipset that does what it's supposed to do but only if you have the appropriate drivers. Some of them are like I said really wonky.

Here's a snbforums thread about the Asus PCE-AC68 and the problems people have had with Broadcom BCM4360 drivers: snbforums.com/threads/pce-ac68-windows-10-drivers.26208

And here's a link to a place where you can download the actual Broadcom drivers themselves instead of being forced to use whatever Asus puts on the download page: station-drivers.com/index.php?option=com_remository&Itemid=353&func=select&id=262&orderby=4&lang=fr

If you guys could do some further testing and see if any of this helps with your weird Wireless problems then that'd be great because I'm interested in upgrading to this motherboard from my Asus X99-E WS. And due to how my house is constructed I don't feel like laying down tons of Ethernet cables all over the place.

I've got a lot of experience with various Broadcom controllers in a wide range of price points and usage scenarios. Broadcom NICs suck ass. This is true of pretty much all their controllers, whether they are wired or not. The drivers suck and they are quirky to say the least. Out of all the wireless adapters I've tested, the Broadcom ones are by far the worst. The Intel's and Killer wireless adapters are far better in the same environment.

I would have to disagree with you about asus dominating, have you been on newegg lately, for the last 2 years their quality has gone way doen and so has their support. The last 2 asus boards have died on me or giving headaches, i use to love their motherboards now i just reminiscence of what they use to be top dog. Bring back Abit.

If you take Newegg reviews as factual, I don't know what to tell you. I'm reminded about the time idiots on there rated the Pentium 975 Extreme Edition as better than the Core 2 Duo because it had higher clocks or some such nonsense. When you actually read them, many of them are clearly posted by people who do not know what they are doing or what they are talking about. That's not to say that none are of any value, but I'd advise taking them with a grain of salt. More than that, Newegg reviews are generally negatively biased to some degree because angry people tend to be the most vocal. ASUS sells more motherboards than most brands. Naturally they get tons of flak.

What about DFI? It seems like ever since X58 they have been forgotten.

The DFI X58 products were roughly the last major enthusiast market products DFI ever produced. The company still exists, but exited the North American motherboard market after the X58 hey day. Today they make hardware for various industrial applications, but nothing that's PC specific.

 

[Sprayingmango]

I love this board so far but I've been having annoying issues. I've made a thread in here about it, can Dan get a response from Raja or JJ at Asus to confirm? The M.2 slot seems gimped and I cannot achieve full 32GB/s link speed as I did on my previous M.2 setup on my RVE...

I'm running SLI 1080s and a 950 Pro 512GB in the M.2 slot. I did use parted magic to do an NVME secure erase last night and still can't achieve full speed... I'm only getting about 1700 MB/s on crystal disk mark vs. the 2200 I got before on the older board.

Seems they gimped the M.2 on this board and it's only going Gen 2 speeds.... plus I can't use my PCIe M.2 adapter for my other 950 Pro because it breaks SLI speeds and the board will not go x16 x16..... WTF asus???

 

[Dan_D]

I love this board so far but I've been having annoying issues. I've made a thread in here about it, can Dan get a response from Raja or JJ at Asus to confirm? The M.2 slot seems gimped and I cannot achieve full 32GB/s link speed as I did on my previous M.2 setup on my RVE...

I'm running SLI 1080s and a 950 Pro 512GB in the M.2 slot. I did use parted magic to do an NVME secure erase last night and still can't achieve full speed... I'm only getting about 1700 MB/s on crystal disk mark vs. the 2200 I got before on the older board.

Seems they gimped the M.2 on this board and it's only going Gen 2 speeds.... plus I can't use my PCIe M.2 adapter for my other 950 Pro because it breaks SLI speeds and the board will not go x16 x16..... WTF asus???

I need to know the complete configuration of the system so I can do more than speculate on what's going on. I suspect its a matter of either having things installed in such a way as to create these issues or simply by having too many PCIe devices in the system. Surprisingly, you can run out of lanes in an SLI based system pretty damn fast if you aren't careful. Bandwidth is often shared between slots and other ports on the PCIe bus. You can do a Google image search on "Rampage V Edition 10 wiring diagram" and you'll see what I mean. Its been quite a while since I tested this motherboard, but I achieved the full speeds via the M.2 slot that I should have. So I know its possible and ASUS didn't "gimp" the slot beyond sharing that bandwidth with other ports / expansion slots. This is normal if you don't have a PLX chip.

This motherboard does not have an onboard PEX PLX8747 chip integrated into it. Those chips give the illusion of more PCIe lanes by multiplexing the existing lanes and adding switching functions. The Rampage V Edition 10 only has the capability of supporting a total of 48 lanes. 8 of which come from the X99 chipset itself. Those are 2.0 lanes while the other 40 come from the CPU if you have a CPU which supports that many lanes. Thus, dropping expansion cards in outside of two GPUs will drop your PCIe lane allocation for the GPUs. This is normal.

Even if you had a PLX chip, you are still constrained by the same bandwidth you are now. Essentially all those chips do is a bit of switching and balance the input of all devices equilaterally across the bus. You create a larger lane pool, but that data still gets shoehorned through the same links as the devices ordinarily do. Thus nothing really changes. You get some balancing across devices and added latency. In games its been shown time and time again that extra lanes rarely if ever increases performance past 8x. This isn't a cause for concern. That said, there is something to be said for the flexibility the PLX provides.

According to the wiring diagram I'm looking at right now (from TweakTown) the M.2 port comes from the CPU's lanes. If I'm reading this right the M.2 slot can be fed from a variety of sources. Depending on how the system is setup, you could lose bandwidth to the x16 slots or to the M.2 slot. Unfortunately, I never tested this motherboard with SLI specifically. My M.2 / U.2 test went fine.

As I said in the other thread on this topic, the Rampage V Edition 10 doesn't have a PLX chip. Therefore it isn't going to be as flexible with its lane configuration as some motherboards are that do have them. The lane allocation on the Rampage V Extreme is different and doesn't seem to suffer from this problem. It also doesn't have as many integrated devices as the newer motherboard does. In hindsight, I think ASUS should have put a PLX chip on the motherboard and made sure that the M.2 slot always ran at full speed no matter what.

 

[Sprayingmango]

Thanks again Dan. My system setup is exactly as it was on my Rampage V Extreme before, I just moved things over:

5960X
SLI 1080
950 Pro in the M.2 slot
16 GB Dominator Platinum DDR4 2800 4x4GB

That's it.

The worst part is I was also able to use an Angel PX1 PCIe adapter card with my second 950 Pro in it on my older RVE without issue, both cards reported full speed! Now I can't even use that in the system without breaking SLI.....

In my RVE the M.2 reported in Magician as running at full link speed. Now in the RVE10 it does not.... No matter what I do I can't get it to report full link speed and my speed tests all come in slower than before. It's frustrating I don't know what I can do to achieve full speed.

 

[Dan_D]

When I tested that motherboard, I had a single Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition with an Intel SSD 750. I used it via the U.2 port and didn't have any problems with speed. The Rampage V Extreme may not have worked with full x16 lanes on both GPUs depending on how you set that up.

Here are the notes from the specifications on that one.

1. 28-LANE CPUs can only support up to 3-Way SLI™/ 3-Way CrossFireX™
2. The PCIE_X8_4 slot shares bandwidth with M.2 x 4.
40-LANE CPU: The PCIeX8_4 slot can only be used in x4 mode or lower when used simultaneously with the M.2 connector. If x8 mode is used, the two connectors will be mutually exclusive.
28-LANE CPU: The PCIE_X8_4 slot will be disabled and the M.2 connector will always be enabled.
3. The PCIE_X4_1 (gray) slot shares bandwidth with the PCIE_X1_1 slot, USB3_E910 and SATAExpress_E1 connector. When the PCIE_X4_1 slot is occupied by an X1 or X2 device, the SATAEXPRESS_E1 will be disabled. When the PCIE_X4_1 slot is occupied by X4 device, the SATAEXPRESS_E1, USB3_E910 ports, and the PCIE_X1_1 slot will be disabled.
8. USB3_E910 ports at back panel will be disabled when the PCIE_X4_1 slot is occupied by an X4 bandwidth device.

Similarly on the Rampage V Edition 10:

*1 28-LANE CPUs can only support up to 3-Way SLI™/ 3-Way CrossFireX™
*2 The PCIEx8_4 slot shares bandwidth with M.2 and U.2.
*3 The PCIEx4_1 slot shares bandwidth with front USB3_34 ports and back USB3.1_EC1_EA2 ports. If a X2 device is connected to the PCIEx4_1 slot, the front USB3_34 ports will be disabled. If a X4 or higher device is connected to the PCIEx4_1 slot, both front USB3_34 and back USB3.1_EC1_EA2 ports will be disabled.
*4 These ports share bandwidth with PCIEx8_4 slot.
*5 These functions will work depending on the CPU installed.
*6 2 x USB2.0 port at mid-board shares with ROG extension (ROG_EXT) port.

Essentially, there is a lot of bandwidth sharing on these motherboards (or any other brand for that matter) with regard to PCI-Express lanes. I highlighted 2 and 4 as it may be relevant here. As you can see, even using certain USB ports can cause some PCIe slots to lose bandwidth and vice versa.