Asus’s new Rampage II Gene motherboard was made under the Republic of Gamers brand that supports the latest Intel Core i7 processors.
This Asus Rampage Gene II otherboard is from the Republic of Gamers (ROG) series which specifically targets gamers and overclocking enthusiasts alike.
The Rampage II Gene sports an LGA1366 socket for Intel Core i7 and Intel X58 chipset. It’s got 6 DIMM sockets that can handle up to 24GB of DDR3 memory.
Expansion slots include 2 x PCIe 2.0 x16 slots, 1 PCIe 2.0 x4 and 1 PCI 2.2 which supports NVidia SLI and ATI CrossFire technology. It also comes 7 SATA 3.0 ports, 1 eSATA and 1 ultraDMA 133 including 2 IEEE 1394a ports (FireWire).
There are 6 USB ports at the back panel and another 6 at the mid-board for a total of 12 USB 2.0 ports. The DVD installer that came in the box also contains some useful utilities:
- Asus Update
- Asus PC Probe II
- Asus AI Suite
- Asus AI Direct Link
- Asus TurboV
- Asus EPU-6 Engine
- Asus TweakIt
The Rampage II Gene mobo is compatible with the Asus OC Station we previewed here earlier. The OC Station allows users to easily control the speed and performance of the CPU/system from an display panel.
The board itself has a physical button switch for Start and Reset (as shown in photo above) of the system so you can kick-start it without even hooking it into the chassis.
It also comes with an LCD Poster — an external LCD screen that hooks up from the board and displays diagnostic info from the mobo. LCD Poster can display test and POST codes. It can also display current time, monitoring data like temperatures, voltages and fan speeds.
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One of the biggest things with Core i7 is the price. The CPU is expensive and the platform boards are not really that cheap either; however, I believe ASUS is trying to remedy that while keeping up to their standards of high performance boards.