ASUS Rampage Extreme

[slim142]

Safe how? material? leak? restriction? fitting?

Material and restriction. Is the block any different than the Maximus/Striker block besides the color?

[sargatanas]

are there any pics yet without the heatsink?
haven't found anything at all

[slim142]

Wait for Anandtech review

[rob2k]

Great pics Eternal and good to see some familiar faces Slim & T.J....

Spent most of last night fitting the passive heatsinks to the board and modding my Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme heatsink backplate to miss the Fujitsu chip.

Got a touch condition to the heatsink at the top of the board and about 2mm clearance to the NB passive cooler so really hoping that it doesn't lift the sink away from the CPU otherwise I will have to mod the chipset heatsink or change the Thermalright to my Zalman CNPS9500A - Zalman backplate for this is fine without any mods.

[rabor]

yeah i saw a link here for 403 bios, trying to find it, i almost ordered it, but 41£ IN SHIPPING to sweden, thats redicilous...

Just wait a couple more days, then the really cheap German shops will add their stocks to the list (http://geizhals.eu/a353500.html). I'm guessing I will have one delivered to the Netherlands for € 290,- max.

[rob2k]

Think i'll take the red cover off and bend the pins over slightly so that there is no contact to the heatpipe.

Should have the system up and running tonight.

[eternal_fantasy]

Eternal, if it's not too much trouble, could you please find out how your SSDs perform on the ICH9R on this board. I kinda see that you have connected it to your raid card(or is it)and I know that its a full OS reinstall if you wanna connect it to the SB of the board. I am thinking going SSD route(OCZ core series or heck might even shelve out for the MTRON PROs) and also planning two 4870x2s in crossfire X, leaving no room for a controller. I saw ICH9R does not play very well with the SSDs but I so want this board. Please disregard if this is too much of trouble.

Yeah I have my SSDs connected to the Areca. Why I brought the card in the first place is because the ICH9R on the origional Maximus Extreme I was using at the time bottlenecked my SSD to just under 100MB/s from a potential 120MB/s. Here is what I got with 2x Mtron 120MB/s on the ICH9R on ME:


And here is the HDTach after using the Areca:


However I think I was able to get the ICH9R on another board (maybe the BlackOps) to perform almost as fast as with the RAID card. So maybe Intel ironed out the SB bottlenecking the drives since last year when the issue was raised. Sorry couldn't give you a definitive answer as I've just reinstalled Vista and took forever to DL TF2 from Steam...
Anyway you will not regrete going with SSDs, makes you wonder how you've survived so long living with those noisy, hot, unreliable, sluggish HDDs!

Material and restriction. Is the block any different than the Maximus/Striker block besides the color?

The block I can confirm is made out of copper (not sure about the barb though.. it is covered with paint), really heavy tbh, so should be no problem there. From what I can see the inside is just a few fat pins, and the water velocity coming into the res seems as fast as ever, so I wouldn't worry about that eighter. The RE block itself is extremely well made compaired to older ROG blocks, feels REALLY solid when I took it off reapplying TIM.

are there any pics yet without the heatsink?
haven't found anything at all

All the Rampage Extreme tech p0rn you could ever want (almost): XFastest

Great pics Eternal and good to see some familiar faces Slim & T.J....

Got a touch condition to the heatsink at the top of the board and about 2mm clearance to the NB passive cooler so really hoping that it doesn't lift the sink away from the CPU otherwise I will have to mod the chipset heatsink or change the Thermalright to my Zalman CNPS9500A - Zalman backplate for this is fine without any mods.

Indeed great to see those what were following the Maximus Extreme thread making their way to the Rampage Extreme

rob you can try unscrewing the little red plate on the mosfet sinks (tiny screws), and slightly bend the pins touching away from heat pipes on your TRUE.

[eternal_fantasy]

Think i'll take the red cover off and bend the pins over slightly so that there is no contact to the heatpipe.

Should have the system up and running tonight.

lol

BIOS 0403: Thread http://www.keepandshare.com/doc/view.php?id=712010&da=y

[rob2k]

Great minds ................ !

[sargatanas]

ty for the pic
seems like ek has to build a huge block for the sb...
btw: could u measure the distance between the nb screw holes? maybe an ek block could fit instead of the fusion block

[eternal_fantasy]

ty for the pic
seems like ek has to build a huge block for the sb...

Whys that? the big plate to the left of the SB are not in contact with anything on the MB, so all you need is an old Asus SB block.

btw: could u measure the distance between the nb screw holes? maybe an ek block could fit instead of the fusion block

Using my high tech ruler and amazing eyesight, the distance between the 2 screws for the Fusion block is 52.5mm, for the NB mounting holes 62mm.

[sargatanas]

ty =)
sounds good, so there won't be any problem to unmount the rollercoaster and get some sexy ek blocks

[GLENBOY]

how do you use the tweakit function on the fly

thanks

[Infa]

theres a buttio for option selection, to choose fsb vcore and that stuff, then theres a switch to change the values, then theres a button for "SET" and you can see all info on a little LCD display.. same as in previous boards as ME and the ddr2 boards.

seems REALLY nice, and no more using setfsb, and you can change the vcore on the fly!! so sweet!

[Holmer]

Eternal, if it's not too much trouble, could you please find out how your SSDs perform on the ICH9R on this board. I kinda see that you have connected it to your raid card(or is it)and I know that its a full OS reinstall if you wanna connect it to the SB of the board. I am thinking going SSD route(OCZ core series or heck might even shelve out for the MTRON PROs) and also planning two 4870x2s in crossfire X, leaving no room for a controller. I saw ICH9R does not play very well with the SSDs but I so want this board. Please disregard if this is too much of trouble.

I suppose you already know but just in case. In order to avoid the famous 80MB/s speed cap on SSD on ICH9R you simply install you OS with the SATA mode set to RAID or ACHI (yes F6 and drivers on a floppy/USB). I have mine set to ACHI but tried RAID 0+1 as well on the ICH9R controller (however, with my Samsung F1) and I get the full 100 MB/s read performance I expect.

[tekjunkie]

I suppose you already know but just in case. In order to avoid the famous 80MB/s speed cap on SSD on ICH9R you simply install you OS with the SATA mode set to RAID or ACHI (yes F6 and drivers on a floppy/USB). I have mine set to ACHI but tried RAID 0+1 as well on the ICH9R controller (however, with my Samsung F1) and I get the full 100 MB/s read performance I expect.

I didn't know that and thanks for the tip. Also, I am planning to run 4 64MB SSDs in Raid 0, so I would have to enable the RAID mode to install the OS anyway. I can always slipstream the drivers.

[MnM]

Guys what DDR3 would you recommend for this?

Should I go for highend 2000MhZ? I have my eye on G.Skill PI 4GB G.Skill DDR3 PC3-12800 1600MHz TT (PI) Series (7-7-7-18) Dual Channel kit.

Not sure what to get. Can you please advise?
CPU will be QX9700 water cooled.

Thanks.

[rob2k]

Got it all hooked up last night but tweaking time was limited. Vista install on current boot disk worked fine just needed Intel drivers and re-activation. So far blown away from bios options even after moving from Striker II Extreme. Could do with someone posting settings for 450x9 1800 sync & linked - It looks like you can now load bios settings from floppy or mem stick !.

PS - Can the pulsating light show of the buttons and Asus emblem be switched off ?....

My rig :QX9770 on Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme cooler
XFX GTX280 XT. Creative X-Fi Elite Pro.
OCZ 4x1Gb PC3-16000C9 2000Mhz Platinum EB
Samsung F1 1TB & 2X500Gb Hitachi SATA 2.
2xSamsung 20XDVD-RW SATA
Vista Ultimate 32bit
Asus Rampage Extreme
Bios : 0403

[rob2k]

Good question MnM - I'm looking to change my 4x1Gb OCZ sticks ro 2x2Gb ??????????.

The Super Talent Project X looks competitive on paper but really need feedback from experiences on this board as don't want to have to buy a third set !!!.

[MikeMK]

Well, i just couldnt resist in the end - especially with the problems ive been having with my striker II extreme over the last few weeks! Should arrive tomorrow. Oh, and for anyone in the UK, check out scan - they now have it, and its cheaper than OCUK -

http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=856997

[eternal_fantasy]

Guys what DDR3 would you recommend for this?

Should I go for highend 2000MhZ? I have my eye on G.Skill PI 4GB G.Skill DDR3 PC3-12800 1600MHz TT (PI) Series (7-7-7-18) Dual Channel kit.

Not sure what to get. Can you please advise?
CPU will be QX9700 water cooled.

Thanks.

The G.Skill should be great, the reviews on this forum and around the web has been very positive. I'm waiting for the HZ series, without the huge heat spreader..

Got it all hooked up last night but tweaking time was limited. Vista install on current boot disk worked fine just needed Intel drivers and re-activation. So far blown away from bios options even after moving from Striker II Extreme. Could do with someone posting settings for 450x9 1800 sync & linked - It looks like you can now load bios settings from floppy or mem stick !.

PS - Can the pulsating light show of the buttons and Asus emblem be switched off ?....

My rig :QX9770 on Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme cooler
XFX GTX280 XT. Creative X-Fi Elite Pro.
OCZ 4x1Gb PC3-16000C9 2000Mhz Platinum EB
Samsung F1 1TB & 2X500Gb Hitachi SATA 2.
2xSamsung 20XDVD-RW SATA
Vista Ultimate 32bit
Asus Rampage Extreme
Bios : 0403

I have been playing with my turd of a E8400, which I had previously only able to reach 575Mhz on the S2E, but on the RE it went over 600Mhz FSB!
I got it prime stable at 570x7, and was posible with only a slight raise of the NB voltage. (Don't mind the high VCore, as I said this CPU sucks..)

I'll put in my QX9650 later on and see what I get, although it will be very different settings with you using 4x1GB and OCZ memory with Samsung chips...

2 way of turning the pulsating light off.. pull the light from the MB socket or switch your PSU off Don't think there is a BIOS option for it.. it may be hardwire/coded into the motherboard to get it working even when the MB is turned off.

Good question MnM - I'm looking to change my 4x1Gb OCZ sticks ro 2x2Gb ??????????.

The Super Talent Project X looks competitive on paper but really need feedback from experiences on this board as don't want to have to buy a third set !!!.

As I said before the G.Skill PI series seems to be quite cheap and are Micron IC based.. at least they were.

Well, i just couldnt resist in the end - especially with the problems ive been having with my striker II extreme over the last few weeks! Should arrive tomorrow. Oh, and for anyone in the UK, check out scan - they now have it, and its cheaper than OCUK -

http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=856997

Welcome onboard!! you will fall in love with the board in no time.

Some thought about this board at the moment:

The good:
It does amazing high FSBs even with crappy hardware
My CellShock 1800 D9GTR kits are absolutely loving this board, and vice versa
Heatpipes keep *most* component cool on the MB

The bad:
Using the onboard Fusion block keeps most of the components cool, except the NB... the design is that heat have to travel through layres of material that is kinda stuck together with a glue gun...:
----------------
Fusion block
copper plate
3 heatpipes side by side
copper plate
North Bridge
----------------
The design is extremely inefficient (it's like the heat have to travel through a sausage roll to get to the water block), and although the fusion block feels cool to the touch, the NB was at 56C at 1.5V. And thats with reseated sinks with MX-2 applied. My Maximus Extreme with Mips block keeps the NB under 47C at 1.7V...
My CellShock blue 1866 D9JNL sticks hates the RE, or the otherway around... but probably due to early BIOS. Can not get it to enter Windows without BSOD/restart.

[Infa]

it doesnt seem as they are shipping outside UK? doesnt look like that or do they?

[eternal_fantasy]

it doesnt seem as they are shipping outside UK? doesnt look like that or do they?

You can try asking at the Scan forum:
http://forums.hexus.net/scan-care-hexus/

There are always pretty quick to reply.

[rob2k]

Nice results Eternal Fantasy - that's a great FSB !!! - will be interesting to see your 9650 results.

Had problems getting mine to boot at 450x8 (I know the CPU is good for 4100Hz so 450x9 will be normal until 500x8 holy grail is reached) with relaxed timings to get memory running at 1800 - I think it is due to perhaps me missing a bios option as it is quite different from the SIIE. Any bios settings that you had to change would be useful

My rig :QX9770-C1 on Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme cooler
XFX GTX280 XT. Creative X-Fi Elite Pro.
OCZ 4x1Gb PC3-16000C9 2000Mhz Platinum EB
Samsung F1 1TB & 2X500Gb Hitachi SATA 2.
2xSamsung 20XDVD-RW SATA
Vista Ultimate 32bit
Asus Rampage Extreme :Bios : 0403
CM Stacker 832 5x120 fans.

[eternal_fantasy]

Nice results Eternal Fantasy - that's a great FSB !!! - will be interesting to see your 9650 results.

Had problems getting mine to boot at 450x8 (I know the CPU is good for 4100Hz so 450x9 will be normal until 500x8 holy grail is reached) with relaxed timings to get memory running at 1800 - I think it is due to perhaps me missing a bios option as it is quite different from the SIIE. Any bios settings that you had to change would be useful

Just put in my QX9650 and booted into windows with 450x9:


Some quick & dirty voltage settings:
VCore 1.45V
VNB 1.5V
PLL 1.2V
VTT 1.35V
VDimm 2.0V

Strap 333
Clock Twister Moderate
The-one-below-clocktwister AUTO

Try with 2 sticks of ram first, then add the rest when you get it stable.
I'll be tightening things and see how high my 9650 will go FSB wise