Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Everything Works Like a Dream, December 18, 2008
Ok here is the straight dope... the board is awesome and every feature works as advertised... Can't remember the last time a motherboard had every function that worked perfectly.... Downside... $400+ price tag is a big cost for admission to the future... Upside... it works perfect with Vista 32 & 64bit
Also forget about cheap memory I used 6 GB of Corsair Dominator DDR3 so that was another $300... upside not one blue screen or glitch
Also the Intel 920 is a great deal... 940 at twice the price isn't worth it for maybe 10% improvement... so either buy the 920 or the best Intel I7 if you got an extra grand burning a hole in your pocket
Again this level of equipment is for the enthusiast and not a typical mainstream computer... if you got the bucks to throw at a machine this Asus Rampage II Extreme is a great building block... but realize you will sink $1500~$2500 into a completed machine easily... So deep pockets are a requirement!!!
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13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Worth the hype, December 30, 2008
Beware! Long review with tests!
The motherboard is hyped up but worth every penny (at the time of course). The $405 sticker is pricey but the advantage of either running my NVIDIA 280 or ATI 4870 is a huge bonus. I have both the A8R and A8N and have been disappointed in having to stick with each brand of video.
I have 3 Thermaltake Armor 6000+ cases with the same PS, HDD, DVD burner and fans. (FYI, the cases are very large in comparison with typical "ATX" cases, but most gamers can agree that a good case and cooling are vital).
In trying both the Visiontek and HIS HD4870 (not the X2) and the eVGA GTX280, I have been blown away at the speed difference between the old Asus A8R/N32 MVP-Deluxes and this one. Of course the RAM/Bus speed and processor are different but to say it boots twice as fast was literally the first telling story.
I decided to test this out on two online MMO (Warhammer 30+ scenario, known to be laggy and WoW Strand/Wintergrasp PvP where it's also laggy). I run full 1920/1200 on a Samsung ToC T220 with the highest possible video settings with DVI connection. I also tested this with Fallout 3 on highest setting (including vegetation and lighting maxed).
All 3 games tested with much better results. I couldn't track the FPS with good results but I did notice that it maintained a solid 40-80fps. Only Warhammer scenario lagged and I believe that was more server-based than video. I could not get WoW or Fallout3 to lag even in Wintergrasp or VATS-mode (yes, being able to headshot while running is imperative). I found that my Razor Tarantula/Lachesis response were improved as well, I'm not sure if this is related to the motherboard but I was able to see marked improvement on my macros.
HDD movement was pretty much the same as I use the same 1TB Seagate drives. I moved 12Gb from drive to drive in about 2 minutes (according to Win Vista64 Premium).
The biggest improvement I saw was related to heat. Even though this motherboard was handling better than the Asus A8-Deluxe series, the heat out of the back of my Armor6000+ case was barely noticible. I use the same Thermaltake W0116RU PS as I am fond of the quiet power and look.
The con part of this motherboard is the design of the expansion slots. The motherboard is larger than the normal ATX so buyer beware if you have a "standard ATX" case. If you are using the 1366 ultra-120 CPU fan, it's tight... very tight but it does fit. If you plan on running SLI/Crossfire, have your nimble-fingered wife/girlfriend standing by.
Even with a nice large case, the extra sound card slot and 2 video cards is about all you're going to get. I tried to fit my Hauppauge HVR-1800 with both video cards in and the sound card was just too much. Unless you either buy the generation 1 video cards that only take up 1 slot, you're not going to fit them in. You could also use the white "x16" slot at the end but I noticed I could not get it to stay in "x16" mode. It seemed to drop to "x8" instead. It could be something I'm doing wrong but I consider myself pretty saavy when it comes to computers so it shouldn't be that cryptic if it was a setting.
Overall Pros:
1. Most versatile motherboard on the market with a good name in computer gaming.
2. Fast motherboard with overclocking almost dummy-proof (I was able to blue screen it with Tweak-IT but I was trying to BSOD it). With 8-8-8-24 OCZ memory and a good SINGLE video card, this is a winner.
3. While price currently at 405 which is higher than other X58 motherboards, the speed and versatility for gaming makes this board the only choice.
Overall Cons:
1. Board layout in expansion slots. I would have rather seen them add another half inch in length to fit the sound card on and make ADEQUATE room for heavy Crossfire/SLI configs. Running them on the white slot in full x16 instead of full x8 would be the cat's meow. Having to use single slot video cards to give a decent fit in with the sound card is just a poor decision.
2. Price
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
All the bells and whistles, June 27, 2009
I've had this board for about two weeks and overall, very impressed. Was able to overclock a Core i7 920 to 3.8GHz with very little effort. Prime95 torture tests (small FFT's) stable for 24 hours and temps did not exceed 66C on any core. Idle temps 37C-44C.
This board has a number of nice features;
* the layout is very nice, all SATA ports are accessible, even with a long video card
* bios is extensive - about the only setting I could not find was the ability to adjust the memory command rate. All the frequencies, multipliers, and memory timings can be adjusted in the manual mode. It also includes a number of "pre-set" overclock choices for the novice.
* the LCD poster has many available configurations, including temperature, voltage, or HW info.
* dual bios - if an overclock or a flash upgrade fails there is a spare bios available to boot from (jumper selectable)
* lighted back panel
* status LED's - there are several status LED's positioned around the board to indicate any problems with memory, cpu, northbridge, etc. In addition, these indicator LED's can be set in the bios to trigger on different criteria
I could not find any cons but there are a couple of watch-outs;
* as other reviewers have noted, the board is approx. 1" wider than a standard ATX board. I went through a couple of cases before I found one that would accommodate the extra width
* if you are running SLI or Crossfire, you may have access to one expansion slot but no more
My setup is below;
Intel Core i7 920, Corsair Dominator DDR3 TR3X6G1600C8D memory (2GHz x 3), Zalman HSF 9900, Zalman 750W PS, EVGA 8800 video card, Lian Li PC-60F case, Windows 7RC
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