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Page 1 of 3  After Rampage II Extreme motherboard ASUS engineers couldn’t sit still and they surprised us with another top-quality motherboard but in many senses completely different from its predecessor. Since high-class users and overclockers were “covered” by Extreme edition this time ASUS created something very different: motherboard in microATX format. Before this motherboard, microATX format was reserved for motherboards with very limited features that were used as base for brand configurations. ASUS with Rampage II GENE is changing this perception of microATX format.
Packaging
Packaging is just slightly larger than motherboard itself. All additional accessories are located on a lower level, below motherboard. We found in the package: DVD (software and drivers), manual, stickers, pack plate, 4 SATA and one PATA cable, SLI bridge and LCD Poster (standard accessory for ROG motherboards).
Layout
New motherboard is designed in more traditional way, without flashing logos and similar stuff. Only “bling” elements on this motherboard are LE diodes located beside all vital elements that display voltage settings for particular component – also standard for ROG products. Green LED means that voltage is nominal or slightly elevated, yellow is next step and everything will be ok if adequate cooling is supplied, while red LED is reserved for extreme voltage values. Layout is perfect, especially if we take into account the fact that this is microATX format. In upper left corner is located connector for LCD Poster and 8-pin EPS 12V for CPU. Right beside it is 8-phase power unit. To the right is positioned LGA1366 socket with double set of holes for cooler mounting. Larger holes are for mounting standard LGA1366 coolers, while smaller, that were added by ASUS, for LGA775 coolers. If you have good old LGA775 cooler you can mount it on this motherboard without need for an adapter.
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Along right edge are mounted 6 DIMM sockets for maximum of 24GB DDR3 RAM modules. Interesting detail is that memory sockets have locking mechanisms only on upper end to allow PEG slot to be located as close as it can be and to allow easy memory module changes without need to take graphics cards out of the chassis. On the right edge are also located BIOS battery, IDE and 24-pin ATX connector. Seven SATA2 ports can be found beneath, while 6 of them are rotated for 90 degrees. At the center of motherboard (PCB) is located X58 chipset that is covered with nice black, passive, aluminum cooler. This cooler is connected with one heat pipe to cooler found on CPU power unit. Power unit cooler is already seen on many ASUS motherboards and it is made of thin fins. There is also one more cooler found on ICH10R south bridge. Complete cooling solution is colored in black with red details (ROG logo) and silver ASUS logo. Below northbridge is located primary PEG slot (PCIe 2.0 16x), PCIe x4, secondary PEG slot (full PCIe 2.0 x16) and one good old PCI slot. At the bottom are pins for I/O panel, 3 USB 2.0 ports, clear CMOS button, start and reset buttons, FireWire connector and front audio panel connectors. In left corner is located SupremeFX X-Fi audio module. This is upgraded version of same module that we already seen on earlier ROG motherboards. Actually it is made by ADI and not by Creative but Creative software is used to support some of the X-Fi features. This means that this sound solution is better than old one but not in the same league with Creative X-Fi products. At the back panel there was enough space for PS/2 keyboard port, 6 USB 2.0 connectors, one eSATA connector, one FireWire connector, GB LAN, audio connectors and clear CMOS button. Beside CPU that has its own power unit, QPI link and chipset have also their own two-phase power unit.
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MotherBoards 
