Let's start with the Asus Rampage III Extreme motherboard's essential feature, a rampage series motherboard. So that means it is part of their highest tier of motherboards even within the Republic of gamers brand. It's a 1366 motherboard and supports LGA 1366, including Intel's latest six-core processors. You got support for all core i7 extreme and all core i7 1366 CPUs. You've got support for SLI and crossfire up to 3-way, but that gets a little bit more complicated, and I'll tell you more once. You've got their ROG to connect to plug the motherboard into another computer and overclock with the other computer. You've got a powerful engine DIGI+ VRM section, digital PWM USB bios flashback. It also includes some bundled software, 3dmark Vantage, and Kaspersky antivirus.

This motherboard has an extraordinary feature, which is the USB BIOS flash feature. There are two pretty unique ways to flash. The BIOS is just by loading the BIOS onto a USB drive and plugging it into the back of the motherboard, and then it just automatically flashes. Then the other is the two separate BIOS chips, which can be flashed with two different settings or set with two different settings. You can flash from one to the other to maintain two completely different overclocking profiles. You could have one for 24/7 and then one for whenever you're doing some extreme benching. Then, you can automatically go back to your 1st BIOS or overclocking profile with a 3-way SLI bridge included. You've also got a well Bluetooth module.

This motherboard is while EVGA and gigabyte are tripping over each other to release motherboards that are not a standard ATX form factor. Asus has opted to stick with the ATX design for this particular motherboard. The design is a little bit wider, so it's more like an extended ATX than a standard ATX, but they keep the standard seven slots rather than making the motherboard longer at the bottom, and I like this for some reasons.

The first of which is that it can fit in many more cases than these non-standard motherboards and if they put the engineering work into it and you can see that they have got the first PCI Express slot right at the top of the motherboard. These PCI slots will run at 8X, and if you have a case like the Corsair Obsidian 800D, that doesn't have eight slots but a vented port at the back. You can install a dual-slot card in four red PCI Express slots and use a standard ATX motherboard to get that powerful feature as long as you put the engineering work into it, which Asus has only. It means there are a lot of components packed in there, but even with this standard ATX motherboard, you still get all the benefits of up to 4-way crossfire or four-way SLI.

Now we start with the CPU or move on to the CPU socket. It's a standard LGA 1366 socket. There's not much to say about it, but they have included CPU fan holes for LGA 1366 processor and what appears to be 775. So if you have an old cooler fan and a lot of the extreme overclocking with their liquid nitrogen pots won't have newer Hart mounting hardware. You can use that to mount it. Over left, at the CPU socket, we have got two 8-pin CPU connectors. That means a digital PWM can pump a lot of liquid nitrogen into your processor. We've got the clear CMOS button right of the ATX power header. You've got to go pretty far overclock speeds for that to be a benefit.

You've got one clear CMOS button on the top of the motherboard. Suppose you're using it on an open bench and one on the back panel very conveniently. Thank you, Asus, for that. Then we've got our support for up to six DIMS memory slots right side of the CPU socket, and that's triple channel memory. We have our onboard switches. There's our start and reset button. There's a liquid nitrogen mode, which appears to be the jumper switch up the start button. They've got a special liquid nitrogen profile for this motherboard, and I'm guessing what it does is it controls the timing of the electrical signals for if the motherboard is going to be cold.

Okay, at the end of the RAM slots, we've got our 24-pin ATX power connector and its ideal location, and then we move down and see our SATA connector. We have two SATA-6 connectors in red color with 6 gigabits per second data transfer speed and then six ports SATA-2. We know that the SATA-2 is a 3 gigabit per second connector. At the right-end corner of the motherboard, we have the BIOS switch. We have one more SATA connector for the case internal drive, and then we have our front panel connectors at the bottom of the motherboard.

Next, we've got, and I like this, this motherboard has all four-pin PWM fan connectors, no legacy three-pin fan connectors, and it has a hudge of them. There are two BIOS chips, so all you have to do this is so cool features are press the bios button, and then you'll load one BIOS profile or the other one. From the right is the plug-in for their OC_station header, a dual five-and-a-quarter-inch Bay device that you can plug into the front of your case for some hardware overclocking.

Let me see, let's keep counting. I got total seven seven fan connectors on the motherboard. So you can load a huge of fans on here. That's pretty cool. Next, we have a Molex connector at the bottom, and this is to provide additional power. There are two of them, and I'm glad to see this one in a very sensitive location because usually, you see a lot of bottom-mounted power supplies these days, and then there's one more besides the ethernet backport. So that's going to give you additional power for your graphics cards. Suppose you're running for high-powered cards. We've got the left-bottom of the motherboard front panel audio connector and then your BIOS battery up from here, and last but not least, we've got one more clear CMOS jumper. You can do it the old-fashioned jumper way or hit either switch up at the top of the board.

Now, let's have a look at the cooling solution. Asus has done an exceptional job of making this motherboard look like something you'd want to put on display in a windowed case. The X58 chipset, as well as the ICH10R southbridge of the motherboard, don't run that hot, it's not necessary to throw a ton of cooling at them, but if you know what that's, Asus has included an extra heatsink which you can see straps in the bottom of the CUP socket. The heatsink spacing is used for Swift Tech's water block that can mount the bottom heatsink of the CPU socket. It looks like Asus has continued their tradition with their high-end Republic of gamer's motherboards of allowing them to be water-cooled with a third-party piece that's pretty neat as well. I like Asus's new style, and their Republic of Gamers motherboards are typically black and red.

Let's have a look at the I/O connectivity at the back. We've got a PS2 keyboard port and six USB 2.0 ports. Besides the USB 3.0 ports, the ROG connect port. That can be used to flash the bios in that innovative new way you plug in the USB with the BIOS. You'll hold it beside the switch for two seconds, and it flashes. Next, we have a clear CMOS switch, optical audio out eSATA firewire Gigabit Ethernet this is you know what this is one of those things. We have two USB 3.0 ports as well as 7.1 audio. Again I have to comment on I'm so sick of seeing gaming motherboards with like. I've seen up to four Ethernet connections on the back. Why do gamers need one Fast Ethernet connection? That's all just a random rant, then.

Thank you for checking out my Asus Rampage III Extreme motherboard overview. I also share the Asus Rampage III Extreme motherboard BoardView file below to fix any electrical troubleshooting. You can download it from the below free.

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