[guru3D] ASUS Rampage IV Black Edition X79 review

[Heinz68]

Part of Final Words & Conclusion

The ASUS Rampage IV Black Edition has to be one of the more amazing motherboards that I have seen to date. I dig the performance, tweakability, features... I love that.

If you are a novice overclocker and go for easy, flick an OC preset in the BIOS and boom, you are locked & loaded. Overclocking itself with the UEFI BIOS is fun as well, it really is an easy-to-work-in environment. For overclocking itself we reached 4800 MHz in a matter if minutes though that really was the maximum for our 4960 processor based on our cooling. Mind you though that we work with vanilla picked engineering sample CPUs, we can never guarantee you'll achieve the same results at home. It works vice versa as well, we've seen end-users with much higher overclocks then we have ever achieved, good on ya!

Really, this is quality at its best added with features and easy ways to overclock your processor and memory. Still, this ROG piece of hardware remains to be focused mainly at tweakers. But man, the Rampage VI Black is a haaaawteeh! But we also acknowledge that is will be a little more difficult to position product as it is pushed so extremely far into the pro-overclockers range with the OC Panel and LN2 functions and so on.

See the complete review at guru3D

[MaddMuppet]

Yes it is a pretty damn sweet board. A new bios has been released "0507" http://www.asus.com/ROG_ROG/RAMPAGE_...ITION/#support

[ZX2Slow]

0403 is still listed on the website, no mention of a new BIOS.

[MaddMuppet]

0403 is still listed on the website, no mention of a new BIOS.

Check which OS you pick. It is listed on the Asus site. I'm using it now.

[MaddMuppet]

Here's a direct link New Black BIOS 0507
Just released today.


RAMPAGE IV BLACK EDITION BIOS 0507
Improve system stability.
http://dlcdnet.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/...-ASUS-0507.zip

It also updates the iRog 1 and 2

[Dalle]

Received my board the 16th. Got it up and running quickly and effortlesly. Had a MSI X79MA-GD45 previously, had a bunch of different issues until latest BIOS update.
Using a 3820 so OC is pretty limited. Planning on upgrading to a 4930K in a month or two.

[FlanK3r]

I have old one, R4E. And this older version is famous too. Unfortunatelly I gave up IB-E (next expensive CPU to collection). I have 3930K and its OK for it.

[LordEC911]

Just spend a good 6-8hours working on a build for my roommate involving this motherboard.
Got the EK waterblocks mounted to it and seems to be a well made design. Unable to remove the heatpipe from the I/O cover/sink.
Tried to just twist it out, ended up having to cut it since it is wedge in and adhered with thermal concrete.

Have some more work to do today or tomorrow with his loops but other than that, it is pretty much done.

[MaddMuppet]

Received my board the 16th. Got it up and running quickly and effortlesly. Had a MSI X79MA-GD45 previously, had a bunch of different issues until latest BIOS update.
Using a 3820 so OC is pretty limited. Planning on upgrading to a 4930K in a month or two.

Yes after reading quite a bit of info, this board is really designed more with Ivy-E in mind than Sandy-E. Mostly on the memory side of things.

[Evantaur]

Yes it is a pretty damn sweet board. A new bios has been released "0507" http://www.asus.com/ROG_ROG/RAMPAGE_...ITION/#support

i hope this fixes my random unexplained BSODs at stock

[MaddMuppet]

i hope this fixes my random unexplained BSODs at stock

What sort of Ram and which CPU?

[Nizzen]

What is stock? Never heard about it

[Evantaur]

well after bios update it seems stable (14.23h in prime), not a single "program x has crashed" or BSOD, maybe i can start overclocking now

What sort of Ram and which CPU?

I7-4930k & HyperX Beast 4 x 8GB 2400MHz

[NEOAethyr]

Anyone know the procedure to exchange for a replacement cpu from intel, not overclocked.
My cpu died last night out of the blue .
I'm fed up with the down time I've had in this last month with the platform, 2nd time now.
I used this cpu and board less then a freaking month.

[ZX2Slow]

I have had some random reboots that I attributed to running stock volts with 32gb ddr2400. Hopefully this BIOS will resolve those reboots.

[MaddMuppet]

I have had some random reboots that I attributed to running stock volts with 32gb ddr2400. Hopefully this BIOS will resolve those reboots.

There has been a discussion going on over at the ROG forums. A fair few people have been suffering from random reboots. I think it comes down to getting all the bios memory timings and voltages right. There are certainly plenty to choose from.

[ZX2Slow]

Updated to 0503, lost my RAID0 volume that I keep my games on. The system reset and the SATA mode was set to the default 'ACHI', windows booted and decided that it would like to write a new MBR over the metadata of the drives that were in my RAID and I lost everything.

Fun times, thankfully I backed up everything.

EDIT: My system is not as stable as it was previously, I had to increase VTT and VCCSA voltages. Im going to start my OC from scratch.

[NEOAethyr]

^^ you lost your array !?
You can get it back with a combination of winhex trial ver and testdisk.
If you really need the data I can walk you through it.

...
Anyways I called up newegg with my invoice, all my login data is on my computer...
They won't exhange it since I got the cpu months ago waiting on the board..
I have intel's number now, newegg gave it to me.
They are closed on weekends though.
I can't believe my cpu died like that.

[MaddMuppet]

It is unusual to have a CPU just die like that. Either they are dead from the get go or Iast until you give them to much voltage.

[NEOAethyr]

I'm not sure if it was my pump or thermal gel.
It wasn't hot when it died, I just got done flashing to a 403 bios with updated rst rom.
Which seemed to be working perfectly fine.
Rom posted and windows boot just fine.
10-20 secs on the desktop and the machine hard reset without warning.
Got stuck with post code 00.
So I did a cmos clear, now I'm in endless postloop.
Tore it down, reseated cpu and put new tim on it unplugged my rad fans so I can hear or feal the pump..
Cannot tell if the pump is working, thinking it is.
It's not getting hot...
Old tim, looked dried out in the middle, no seperation/leakage though.

Tried 2 sticks out of my quad set in slot d1 plus I tested another slot on it's own just in case it was a dead chan or slot.
Tried a 1 gig stick, got stuck at some other post code I forget now but I got the impression it wasn't compatible (trident 2133 cas9).
Found another thread online where someone else had the same exact bootloop, dude has a youtube vid of it..., he replaced the cpu and it was fixed.

Oh and I even tried ERALL.CAP, still same boot loop over and over.
I was thinking maybe the intel driver freaked out with the new rom and wrote some nvdata or something and that ERALL.CAP might get be back to factory reset.
I already tried R4BE.CAP which is what I normally use.
And the 2nd bios which normally works and has it's own stash of cmos profiles (these are stord in the bios chips..).

I wasn't even gaming at the time or anything, I had iust booted windows and had ended a few tasks like punkbuster for ex. and nvsvc.
It got warm gaming but it wasn't like that.
I wasn't clocking and testing or anything, been to busy using it :/.
I actually sat down to mess with it in my own sort of way, learning mmtool and it unexpectedly died on me.
I wasn't pushing it :/.

I lost my array a while back and it took me about a week to recover.
Now my cpu dies.
Wth..
I can't finish tweaking win x64, and I can't get started on xen.
I can't even work on my vga cards.
Or anything else for that matter.

I don't care if end up having to spend the money on the overclocking warrenty, but it would be bs to have todo though, not even overclocking it at the time and all.

I gotta figure a way of double checking this nzxt x60...

[ZX2Slow]

It is unusual to have a CPU just die like that. Either they are dead from the get go or Iast until you give them to much voltage.

I think that is a strong possibility. Intel from my experience will not replace a overclocked processor unless you paid for their tuning plan.

http://click.intel.com/tuningplan/

[NEOAethyr]

I had it at 4.2ghz, stock volts.
Same settings since I got it.
I think it was overheating and the bios failed to protect it for some reason.
That's my best guess.
Me and my cousin smelt something burning the other day but I couldn't track down were it was coming from, my heater, computer or something else I don't know.
The x60 does flicker between red and green when it's warm though, I was under the impression that it was inbetween hot and cold to cause that.

I'll take out the x60 tonight and shake it up, should beable to hear the pump then.

Typing on the android is kind of a pain lol...

[LordEC911]

Got my buddies system together and leak tested. Get a constant power cycle, on for a second or two then turns off for a few seconds than back on...

Motherboard is the only new thing but the CPU led by the 24pin is lighting up on occasion. Not looking forward to redoing his loop for a 3rd time.