ASUS Rampage III Extreme Pro Reviews

The Rampage III Extreme was worthy enough to make it into our main system for everyday use. We've seen several new innovations on this motherboard that we have not seen in the past, like BIOS flashing through a USB flash drive without any hardware present, the introduction of all 4-pin PWM fan connectors for better fan control through software and hardware and RPM reading, the LN2 mode to allow users to bypass the CPU Freeze problems when their system becomes unusable due to freezing the CPU with too much Liquid Nitrogen, and even the PCI-Express switches that allow users to enable and disable separate PCI-Express slots on the motherboard. ASUS can also be proud of their Dual-BIOS, which is easily switchable, and in case one fails, the first BIOS can be reflashed straight from the second BIOS. While there are some other really nice features on this motherboard, including the newly redesigned power design, and the new heatsink design, we believe that these are the main reasons why extreme overclockers and gamers should consider the Rampage III Extreme over the Rampage III Formula and other motherboards out on the market now.

ASUS Rampage III Extreme is a top-notch motherboard for Intel socket 1366 CPUs, targeted to enthusiasts that want a motherboard with the latest technologies (such as SATA-600 and USB 3.0), a huge range of overclocking features, support for eight fans (three of them can be controlled by optional temperature sensors), among other pluses. For extreme gamers it will probably also satisfy, with its four PCI Express x16 slots supporting SLI and CrossFireX arrays. The only drawback of this motherboard is its price: it is very expensive. Consumers, besides being gaming and overclocking freaks, must also have a stuffed wallet.

The R3E is fast and a great overclocker that can easily keep up with the best X58 boards on the market. It’s also very easy to overclock thanks to its well-designed BIOS that combines both user friendliness and a ton of obscure options that an extreme overclocker may find useful. Several of the RoG features are handy too, such as the voltage monitoring points. Ultimately, for the vast, vast majority of users, the R3E fails to justify its extremely high price tag in the face of such stiff competition from Gigabyte and Asus’ own range of non-RoG motherboards.

If you want the X58 overclockers' board, the Rampage III Extreme is where it's at. But you may have to remortgage the house and sell the kids if you want the sort of setup to do it justice.

So really, you have some awesome features, a stellar BIOS, excellent quality hardware, a quality paint job and good cooling. What more could you want? Oh right, USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gbps, of course! This board has that too. I think ASUS hit a home-run with the Rampage III Extreme, because this board deserves to be on everybody's wish list. I thought the Rampage II Extreme was ground breaking, and here I am. I have been blown away all over again, and I love it. Keep it up, ASUS.

The Asus Rampage III Extreme is chock full of features and brings back that overclocking magic that has appeared to have been lost.

Some say it eats CPUs for breakfast. Others say it's secretly a masochist. All we know is the ASUS Rampage III Extreme motherboard is one tough customer and well worth your hard earned dollars.

As we have to give a verdict, out of the four motherboards tested, we’d probably stretch ourselves to opt for the Rampage III Extreme in almost every scenario. While ASUS did not clean the floor in all departments, the R3E is easy to use, has a good BIOS, decent feature set and overclocks reasonably well. This doesn't mean to say that we feel the board is priced fairly though for what it offers. We'd like to see ASUS sell the R3E around the $300 mark considering there are no NF200 bridge chips cutting into base part costs.

The sheer amount of overclocking features and options packed into this board is simply staggering. We could spend weeks (and we imagine many people will) tweaking and adjusting this board to get some truly exceptional clocks.

The ASUS Rampage III Extreme is the most highly featured board I’ve ever seen. With RC Bluetooth and ROG Connect, you can connect external devices like cell phones and laptops to overclock the system externally just like a race car driver team. ASUS also brings SATA 6 Gb/second and USB 3.0 support to this board, making it a dream enthusiast’s board. The board was easily able to overclock the Core i7 920 CPU we use for testing to the over 3.99GHz range, just shy of 4GHz. Performance in the normal testing regime was excellent. This board gets an obvious Editor’s Choice for these reasons. ASUS has made it easy for overclocker’s wanting the most out of their system with CPU Level Up allowing you to get a faster CPU speed without hassle.

It's difficult to recommend a motherboard that costs the almost same as a complete value end system, but for the small niche of users that the Asus Rampage III Extreme is aimed at, it is very nearly the perfect motherboard, so for them it's highly recommended.

A general consensus among hardware sites finds that the new wave of enthusiast level X58 motherboards offer very little (if any) performance benefit over the products they're supplanting. That's exactly what we saw when we compared the Rampage III to the previous version, which is almost two years old. The boards turned in similar results throughout testing, often trading the top two spots in our comparison group, which included the EVGA Classified. Of course, the quality of the boards we used for testing was already top notch, so achieving status quo in this particular case isn't necessarily a bad thing.