The X48-based RampageExtreme mainboard

Tag : titanium block
The X48-based RampageExtreme mainboard is the last major high-end entry before BloomfieldNehalems enter the fray a quarter from now.
The board is a major improvement over its direct predecessor, theX38-based Maximus Extreme. First, the chipset and VRM cooling wasnot only improved, but also modular, with a variety of optionscoming right out of the box - including taller heat sink modulesfor those who have more casing space.
For instance, the Fusion water block for the North Bridge can beunscrewed and replaced by a provided heat sink replacement, if youdon't use the water cooling. In the first quick round of tests, Ijust left things as they are.
Then, the Crosslinx PCI-E bridge providing the 1x16 to 2x8 optionsfor one of the PCIe v2 paths is gone now: those who want more thantwo GPUs will simply opt for dual 4870X2 cards, each in its own x16v2 slot. This is a noteworthy power, heat and mobo real estatesaving.
As with all recent ROG mobos, there is no built-in sound to wastethe board space: instead, a PCI-E Creative X-Fi basic HD audio cardis in there. If you want something more, like say X-Fi FatalityTitanium in that same PCI-E slot, you an easily replace the old one- no wastage on the board.
16-phase power, dual switchable BIOS with cute on-board buttonsround up the new features here.
The first quick run was with Intel's QX9650 CPU and Zalman 9500CMSfan: with multiplier 9x, I had air-cooled 4.05 GHz at FSB1800 at1.3875 volts for the CPU and all other settings default - it took awhole of one restart and three minutes of get this done. The happymemories consisted of four of Kingston's brand new 2 GB DDR3-1600CL9 DIMMs, which happily worked at DDR3-1800 at the same settings.It's not bad to have 8 GB total of memory at this kind of speed,mind you.
Tomorrow's instalment has some benchmarks, as well as the dual-corePenryn attempt: can it break the FSB2000 barrier withoutwatercooling the CPU? And in quad core operation, how far will itgo above its X38 predecessor? Watch this space... µ