ASUS RAMPAGE 5 Edition 10 Review

[ondoy]

Introduction
It seems like it was just yesterday that ASUS released it's first Rampage 10 years ago which ran on the extremely popular LGA775 socket using the x48 chipset.
After the first Rampage was released there have been several releases along the way from Rampage II, Rampage III, Rampage IV and the latest Rampage which is the Rampage V for the x99 chipset.
To celebrate it's 10th year anniversay, ASUS has introduced it's new flagship motherboard for the X99 chipset, The new Rampage V Edition 10, designed for the true aficionados and represents the pinnacle
of what a x99 motherboard can be.

Packaging and Contents
The board comes in a premium box with the 10th anniversay logo in the middle.

At the back of the box shows several features and specs.

Here's a comparison on how huge the box is compared to the X99-A

The box alone is on a league of it's own, there's a premium feel to it when you touch it for the first time.

 

[ondoy]

Opening the box reveals the ROG logo on the middle and the board enclosed in a foam.

wait, did I say the box is in a league of it's own ? it sure is, you'll have that euphoric feeling when you touch and open the box for the first time. lol.

Underneath the motherboad is a black box which contains all the accessories.

It comes with the User's manual, 1 x SupremeFX Hi-Fi, 1 x SupremeFX Hi-Fi cable, 1 x 2-Way SLI bridge(s), 10 x SATA power cable, 1 x M.2 Screw Package, 2 x CPU installation tool
1 x ASUS 3T3R dual band Wi-Fi moving antennas, 1 x Fan Extension Card (3 x 4-pin fan out), 1 x Fan Extension card screw pack, 1 x 3-Way SLI bridge(s), 1 x 4-Way SLI bridge(s)
1 x Q-connector(s) (1 in 1) , 1 x 12 in 1 ROG Cable Label(s), 1 x 5-pin to 5-pin cable, 1 x Extension Cable for RGB strips (80 cm), 3 x Thermistor cable(s), 1 x USB drive with utilities and drivers
1 x I/O frame, 2 x ROG coasters
That's a lot of accessories, that's like 3 X99-A accessories worth.

The board doesn't come with a drivers disk, it however comes with a thumb drive.

This should now be the standard for motherboard drivers and utilities, as not everyone uses a disk drive anymore.

 

[ondoy]

Board Pron
The board comes in a Black/grey color scheme, which is very nice.

more pics at the album

 

[ondoy]

Features/Specs
The board features a native m.2 and u.2 socket, the m.2 socket is placed in between the dimm slot and 24 pin power connector.
now you can show off your new 1TB NVME SM961 without anything blocking the view.

It has 10 Sata 6 ports that supports Raid 0, 1, 5, 10.
Just beside the sata ports you can find the U.2 socket.

On the upper right corner of the board you'll see the DIMM swtich, PCIE lane switch, Safe button, Retry button, MemOK button, Start and Reset button and a LCD display for the different codes.

One nice feature of the board is the DIMM and PCIE switches, these switches allows you to activate/deactivate your DIMM sockets or PCIE pass through lanes without having to remove the memory
or the graphics card,
Another useful feature is the buttons, the safe button helps you powers off your system and launches it into safe mode, the retry button allows you to reboot your systems if it hangs during POST, and the
memOK button this allows you to easily fix DRAM induced system boot failures.

The board has it's I/O shield pre-mounted, just look at that sexy built in I/O shield no need to worry of losing your I/O shield.
It still comes with a I/O frame though. It has 4x usb 3.1 ports (2 type c and 2 type a) and Wifi 802.11 ac (up to 1300Mbps and bluetooth v4.0).
The intel gigabit ethernet is also located at the back, it features the latest dual Intel? Ethernet (I218-V and I211-AT). Intel's lan has the advantage
of reducing cpu overhead and offering exceptionally high tcp and udp throughput. It also has a LANGuard, LANGuard means safer, more reliable connections for your battles! Advanced signal-coupling technology and premium surface-mounting processes join forces to protect your Rampage V Edition 10 motherboard?s connection and deliver pumped-up throughput, plus electrostatically-guarded and surge-protected components (ESD Guards)

The board also features SafeSlot, it's the PCIE slot reinvented by ASUS and engineered to provide superior rentention and shearing resistance.
Manufactured in single steps using a new Insert-molding process integrates the slot with the fortifying metal for an inherently stronger slot which is then
firmly anchored to the pcb through additional solder points.

 

[ondoy]

Probably the feature I like most about this board is the SupremeFX, this board is stuffed with high end audio hardware to ensure that it gives you the best
audio experience. It supports the common 32 Ohm all the way up to the 600 Ohm options. I'm really impressed by the audio that the board provides, I've been
using a schiit stack combo and it's a decent combo for less than 200$, I would say that board's audio is better than my current setup.
Aside from the rear IO panel, the board comes with a separate DAC that fits on your 5.25" drive bay.
It comes with Sonic Studio II to allow you to appy and enjoyn different audio effects for entertainment.

Just beneath the pcb you can see the led bar for your aura experience.

at the bottom of the board you have your typical connectors for your usb, fan header extension, rgb header,

 

[ondoy]

Test

By just connecting the power cable, the rgb lights up and cycles thru the colors.

 

[ondoy]

UEFI
Out of the box the board is on version 0502, decided not to upgrade as i'm using an ES chip which may be block on the newer BIOS.
Here's a look at the different BIOS menus, more screenshots found here.

During the bootup process it shows the ROG 10th anniversary logo.
OS intallation was breeze.

Inserting the thumb drive allows you to run the ROG setup, here you can see the different drivers which
you can install everything by a click of a button, all drivers installed in less than 10 minutes.

 

[ondoy]

Just beneath the drivers menu, you'll see the utilities menu which would install the flowing apps.
installation for all apps took about 40minutes.

System screenshot

RGB effects can be controlled from the AURA software.
The AURA software allows you to configure the RGB lightning to a great extent.
Allows you to control it's start/shutdown lights and each components behavior from IO cover, PCIE, PCH all the way to the backplate lights.

Turning off would disable all the controls giving you a black out feel.

 

[ondoy]

Here's a look the AI Suite 3, as with all the AI Suite from here you can monitor your systems fan/temps and control you CPU's overclocking.

And one of my favorite utilities, is the RAMDisk.
This allows you to allocate a portion of your RAM as a disk for faster load/access times.

Another cool utility included is the RAMCACHE.

What Is A RamCache?
A Ramcache essentially serves as an invisible prioritized hard drive ( in the sense data is present on it ). This hard drive is actually a cache and contains the most commonly accessed data on system. This cache improves performance by taking over key parts of reading and writing the most accessed data. Minimizing and in some cases eliminating the involvement of considerably slower standard storage options. As the read, write and access time performance of DRAM "memory" is considerably faster than that of standard storage devices this is where the huge increase in performance comes.

ASUS RAMPAGE V EDITION 10 is the best board to have right now, and if you have been a fan of the Rampage series of boards
then definitely this is the board to get for the X99 platform. This board had me at the SupremeFX , who needs an external DAC ? when
the board provides it's own high end audio components, well for me I won't be needing it anymore.
Now the question is, Are you a Champion ? If you are, then this is the board for you (THE CHOICE OF CHAMPIONS).

 

[PeckingOrder]

but can it handle 4 overclocked reference RX 480s in CF?

 

[ondoy]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_eM6pe-Xys
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxbXlF0qfO0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_Osaf61yw8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96GkVa4Bw4w
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BK0H0rjIewU

 

[UsandThem]

$600 for that board? Wowza!

Definitely targeted towards the ultra-enthusiast.

It sure is a spectacular looking board.

 

[ChuckR]

This looks awesome. What would you put it in and with to get the max usage? Is there a system built with it?

 

[CRash55]

I am looking at this board for a new build using a 6850K but have am concerned at PCIe lane allocation.

If I put GPU's in slots 1 and 3 and connect U.2 drive will the GPU's run at x16? I saw on another forum that using U.2 turns on M.2 as well and may drop the slots to x8.

 

[ondoy]

6850k is 40 pcie lance cpu.
you'll have both 16x pcie lane and still be able to use the u.2 and m.2 at the same without any bandwidth limitation.

 

[CRash55]

OK. I was just concerned as I saw a thread that when the two were turned on it dropped slot 1 to x8. Hopefully I am just missing something

 

[ondoy]

if you have a 28 pcie lane cpu with 2 way sli,
it would operate at 16 and 8 and u.2 will be disabled only m.2 is enabled.
since you have a 6850k which is a 40 pcie lane cpu, there's nothing to worry unless you're going for a 4 way sli, which would turn off both m.2 and u.2

 

[CRash55]

I just got confirmation from someone in another thread using exactly the setup I want and it is working just fine. So the person who posted about the M.2 and U.2 throttling his first slot must have had something else going on

 

[CRash55]

To further confuse things I just got this in an email from Asus Tech Support:



Thank you for contacting ASUS Technical Support.

We are writing back to you regarding the issue with the board.

I checked and found that it is a motherboard design limitation, So two GPU, it will drop to x8 with U.2. You can use hyperkit or M.2 with 950 Pro to acheive 16x for 2 GPU.

For any further queries, please feel free to reply to this E-Mail. We will be glad to assist you.

Thank you for choosing ASUS.

Regards,
Arnold. K

 

[rgldsmth]

I had an old 775 Asus Rampage with a x2310 and 2 x raptors and a 8800 GTX with a PC performance 850W server P/S in raid 0 back in the day, it was the shiznit.
Overclockers dream from 2.13 G to 3.8-4g with little voltage and good cooling.

Great mobo price is ridiculous....... but I might get one.....