 So today we're going to be having a look at the rampage 3 formula motherboard This is from Asus's Republic of gamers line But you can tell from the suffix formula that it's actually a value member of their Republic of gamers line Which may seem like a little bit counterintuitive But it is so the rampage 3 extreme is the fully featured board and the rampage 3 formula is kind of like a little brother So this is a core i7 motherboard that means it has support for all the latest LGA 1366 CPUs that means you've got support for six cores quad cores And that's pretty much all you have on 1366 because it is an enthusiast platform core i7 extreme core i7 You've got support for SLI as well as HCI crossfire X So let's have a look at the box itself You can see a handy little window where you've got three PCI express 16x slots But we'll talk more about the board in a minute Let's talk about a couple of the key features so you've got ROG connect Which is a USB interface for plugging in a different computer to actually Control BIOS options on this particular board you've got game first technology Which is a LAN feature that it has in order to give you the the speed you need to pwn Awesome, I love it as well as to give your games priority access to any LAN functions You've got BIOS flashback So you have two BIOS ROMs which you can actually choose which one you want to boot from As well as supreme FX X-FY 2 built in so that's a creative solution for your onboard sound Extreme engine digi plus is a powerful combination of analog and digital design elements as well as an included copy of Kaspersky antivirus on the back in Typical ROG fashion it has exactly the same stuff Except for oh it also mentions three-way SLI and crossfire X so that's that's a good thing I suppose it has one additional feature listed on the back. It's not already listed on the front So let's have a look at the accessory package Which as you might expect that the ROG board is quite complete you got a three-way SLI bridge You have an IO shield with their Spongy backing on it you also have some zip ties for cable management You have a crossfire bridge a nice long flexible SLI bridge You've got your Q connectors for easy plugging in of the front USB as well as the front panel connectors a user's guide including a republic of gamers sticker as well as a Support DVD which you should throw away and download the latest from the ASUS website You have an optional fan as well as an installation guide for it So that's only if you're using water cooling or a passive or very low airflow cooler You've got an eSATA bracket as well as USB 2.0. There's your cable for ROG connect Which is a standard USB a to a male to male cable, then you've got six SATA 2 cables two SATA 3 cables Please note that those are identical other than the color There is no physical difference between a SATA 2 cable and a SATA 3 cable in terms of data transmission I mean, I guess if you had a really terrible quality SATA 2 cable It might not work at SATA 3 speeds, but I mean I really find that quite quite far-fetched indeed Alright, so let's get the motherboard out itself and have a look at it as always ASUS has just nailed the aesthetic on this particular board Their Republic of gamers boards have really been outstanding lately in that regard So we've got a black PCB with black Nickel plated as well as red accents. It looks just phenomenal So let's have a look at the overall layout cameraman's very interested in the PWM cooling here So you can see that that is connected via a couple of different heat pipes So the top one over here is connected via heat pipe to the bottom one So you can see those two are sharing their load a little bit and then you have a heat pipe connecting the the left PWM cooler to the Northbridge cooler down to oh, that's a separate heat pipe itself. No, no, it's not. That's the same heat pipe It's flattened out and then it curves up and that connects the Southbridge as well. So let's look at the overall board layout We'll start with the CPU socket. So cameraman if you can come direct your attention over here. That is an LGA 1366 socket I already mentioned the CPU support but I will say it again core i7 as well as core i7 extreme You've got your 8 pin power connector with the optional 4 pin Cover placed on it by default up here in the top left corner and its ideal location You've got your 6 RAM slot supporting dual dual channel You're supporting dual sets of triple channel DDR3 memory with the quick install Memory DIMM slot so you can see that there are only clips on the one side The other side has no clips so you're meant to insert the module this way and then clip it down on the one side Your 24 pin connector is in its ideal location along the right hand edge of the board and you've also got start reset and all of your Voltage measurement options along the top right hand side of the board as well in very very conveniently located fashion So down here we have the go button. We have a cue reset up here I had actually missed that button and then moving down the board. Oh cameraman still looking at all the buttons Oh, he's waiting for it to focus. I see what he's doing now. Okay, so let's move down and have a look at these SATA options So we've got six SATA 2 ports. Remember Intel still does not have support natively for SATA 3 on their chipset So it's actually a Marvel chipset right there that is running the SATA 3 6 gigabit per second port So you do have two of those moving down the board We have a BIOS reset switch right here. Although that's far less conveniently located than the one that I already saw on the back panel Here's your front panel connectors as well as you another fan connector. You've got your dual BIOS chips right there So it's actually got two physical chips This is not some cheap hack two physical BIOS chips that you can switch in between You've got your front USB ports here as well as some more of them over here I'm not sure which of these are USB and which are not to be perfectly honest All right, we've got two more fan connectors and I'm gonna do a quick count of the fan connectors before we're done here Firewire port and then let's look at the PCI Express layout So yeah, there's the X5 to supreme effects camera man's making his way to the PCI Express lots We start with a PCIe 1x slot up at the top here and then we have a PCIe 16x slot now, please note there is an absence of a slot here The assumption is that if you're buying a Republic of Gamers board and this is a good assumption That you're probably using a dual slot graphics card, which you should be so you don't need a slot here basically All right Then we've got another PCI Express 16x slot a PCIe 1x 16x and a PCI slot So if you're running dual card SLI or crossfire, you're gonna use these two which means you're gonna cover this one your blank You're gonna cover this one in a PCI slot that will leave you with two PCIe 1x slots that will remain usable. We've got an auxiliary molex power connector here So if you are running up to three cards and then you'll cover almost all of your slots except this guy Then you should plug that in because otherwise you're drawing just too much power out of the 24 pin connector Now let's have a look at the back of the board on the I.O. shield We've got a purple PS2 port. So that's gonna be keyboard only then we've got one two, three four five six Oh, is that one of those combo ports? No, it's not. So we have six USB 2.0 ports. We have a powered eSATA port as well as a regular eSATA port and then we have a clear CMOS switch optical audio out the ROG connect button USB 3.0 support gigabit LAN and those look like gold-plated 7.1 audio connectors and before we're done I did promise a count of the four pin fan connectors So we have one two up here by the CPU socket. We have another one over here on the top right of the board We have another one down here by the north bridge So that is I don't know four and then down at the bottom of the board we find another five six seven total so that means that you can actually control all of those fans via the BIOS and Hold on one two three Four five six seven eight eight. There's one more over here by the 24 pin connector So you can actually control eight fans via the BIOS software and you can optimize them for performance or for silence That's a pretty cool feature and they all support PWM. There's the back of the board in case you care Thank you for checking out my unboxing of the rampage 3 formula. Don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech Tips