Asus Rampage III Extreme Motherboard Review

Republic of Gamers motherboards all share the same red and black color scheme using a black PCB combined with red expansion slots.  The heatsinks are often color matched, and in this case are questionable in their ability to cool.  Overall the layout is good and clearly designed for multi GPU configurations giving you plenty of space for dual slot coolers across any of the available 16x PCI Express slots.

The back of the board is relatively clean with only a few surface components.  You'll find a black guard plate covering the exposed leads from the PWM.  

Digital PWMs are quite popular on enthusiast motherboards and for good reason; they supply extremely smooth and stable power to the CPU.  The Rampage III Extreme features a hybrid 8 phase digital PWM complimented by a shiny FPCAP in the middle.  This Functional Polymer Aluminum Solid Electrolytic Capacitor works much like adding a large capacitor to the power line of your stereo system. 

Triple channel memory comes standard with the Nehalem architecture.  The Rampage III Extreme supports up to 24GB of DDR3 at speeds up to 2200Mhz.

There are a total of two 8 pin 12v power connectors for the CPU.  Under normal operation you'll only need to use one of these but, as CPU clocks rise having the extra power is almost required.

Standard 24 pin power is located near the memory sockets and right above the Debug LED array.  Debugging is done differently on the Rampage, instead of having a dual digit display there are four LEDs.  Each of these will light up during the boot process and turn off if things check out.  If any of them stay on you have got a problem.