 The Rampage 3 Extreme is probably the motherboard I've received more requests for an unboxing for than any other board in the history of my channel. So let's start with the actual motherboard itself, the basic features. It is a Rampage series board, so that means it is part of their highest tier of motherboards even within the Republic of Gamers brand. So it's a 1366 motherboard. It supports LGA 1366, of course, including Intel's latest 6-core processors. So you've got support for all Core i7 Extreme as well as all Core i7 1366 CPUs. You've got support for SLI and Crossfire up to 3-way, but that gets a little bit more complicated and I'll tell you more once we get the board opened up. The box is huge and comes with a window so you can see the motherboard on the store shelf. You can see they've got, we'll talk more about the board after. So basic features, you've got their ROG Connect so you can plug the motherboard into another computer and overclock with the other computer. You've got Extreme Engine Digi Plus, so that means you've got digital PWM, USB BIOS Flashback, more on that in a little bit. And it also includes some bundled software, 3DMark Vantage and Kaspersky Antivirus. Now this motherboard actually introduces, besides that USB BIOS Flash feature, two pretty unique ways to flash the BIOS. So one is just by loading the BIOS onto a USB stick, plugging it into the back of the motherboard and then it just automatically flashes. And then the other is the two separate BIOS chips which can be flashed with two different settings. So they can be set with two different settings and you can flash from one to the other in order to actually maintain two completely different overclocking profiles. Like you could have one for 24-7 and then one for whenever you're doing some extreme benching or whatever and then you can automatically go back to your old one. You've got a three-way SLI bridge included. You've also got a, hmm, oh I think this is that little Bluetooth thing. Yeah, this is a Bluetooth module, so it comes with Bluetooth, that's pretty cool. Then you've got whatever's in here, which I will find out what it is for you. Okay, we've got a couple screws and then we've got some bubbles and then we've got a little fan. Okay, now we'll have to find out what that hooks up to. You can see it's like an anodized red heat sink. So that's probably what the heat sink on the motherboard's finish is going to look like. They've actually applied a proper thermal compound and a reasonable amount of it. I'm really impressed to see that. Most motherboard manufacturers don't get that detail. I.O. bracket with two USB and one eSATA. Then we've got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight SATA cables for our right angle, for our straight. We've got the ROG Connect USB cable. Then we've got an I.O. shield. We've got some zip ties. We've got their, oh this is good, Pro Belt. That's another feature it includes. So you've got little leads that you can plug into all of the voltage monitoring points on the motherboard to make it easier to plug in your multimeter. You've got their Q connector, one crossfire bridge and then one long SLI bridge. We've got some temperature sensors. And last but not least, we have the Rampage Extreme User's Guide with some labels for the SATA cables as well as the drivers and installation utilities DVD. Don't use that. Download the latest off the ASUS website. Then we have a Republic of Gamers sticker. So let's get all that back in there and let's get the motherboard out. So one thing that stands out to me right away about this motherboard is while EVGA and Gigabyte are tripping over themselves and each other to release motherboards that are not a standard ATX form factor, ASUS has opted to stick with the ATX design for this particular board. You can see they've gone a little bit wider. So it's more like an extended ATX than a standard ATX, but they keep the standard seven slots rather than making the board longer at the bottom. And I really like this for a number of reasons. The first of all, the first of which is that it means it can fit in many more cases than these non-standard boards. It also, if they put the engineering work into it and you can see that they have, they've got the first PCI Express slot right at the top. It means there's a lot of components packed in there, but even with this standard ATX board, you still get all the benefits of up to four-way crossfire or four-way SLI. These slots will run at 8x, 8x, 8x, 8x, and if you have a case like the Corsair Obsidian 800D that doesn't have an eighth slot, but does have a vented port at the back, you can actually install a dual slot card in here. So you'll go two, two, two, and two. So you can use a standard ATX board to get that extreme feature as long as you put the engineering work into it, which ASUS has. Why don't we start with the CPU, or rather, move on to the CPU socket. So it's a standard 1366 socket. There's not much to say about it, but they have included holes for 1366, as well as what appears to be 775. So if you have an old cooler, and a lot of the extreme overclocking guys with their liquid nitrogen pots won't have newer mounting hardware, you can definitely use that to mount it there. Over here we have got two 8-pin CPU connectors. So that means that this, through its digital PWM, is able to pump a lot of juice into your processor. You've got to be going pretty far over stock speeds for that to be a benefit, but hey, that's what this board is for. We've got the clear CMOS button right here, as well as one here. So you've got one on the top of the board if you're using it on an open bench, as well as one on the back panel. Very convenient. Thank you ASUS for that. Then we've got our support for up to six DIMMs, so that's triple channel memory. We have our on-board switches. There's our start and reset. And then we have...oh boy. Okay, well I wish I knew what those do, but please leave a comment if you know what these do. They are on-off switches right here. They are labeled switch one to switch four. Very cool. Okay, oh, this is interesting. There's a liquid nitrogen mode up here, and it appears to be the jumper right here. So they've actually got a special liquid nitrogen profile for this board, and I'm guessing what it does is it controls the timing of the electrical signals for if the board is going to be really, really cold. Okay, here we've got our 24-pin connector in its ideal location, and then we move down and we see our SATA connectors. So we have two SATA 6 gigabit per second connectors here, and rather, yeah, two SATA 6 gigabit per second, and then six SATA 2, so SATA 3 gigabit per second connectors here. Then we have the BIOS switch right here. We have one more SATA connector. Then we have our front panel connectors. Here are the two BIOS chips. So all you have to do, this is so cool, is press the button, and then you'll actually load one BIOS profile or the other one. Here's the plug-in for their OC station, which is a dual 5-1⁄4-inch bay device that you can plug into the front of your case for some hardware overclocking. Next we've got, and I like this, this motherboard has all 4-pin PWM fan connectors, no legacy 3-pin fan connectors, and it has a ton of them. One, two, three, let me see, let's just keep counting here. I've got four, I've got five, six, seven. Seven fan connectors, so you can load a ton of fans on here, that's pretty cool. Next we have a Molex connector at the bottom, so this is to provide additional power, there's actually two of them, and I'm glad to see this one in a very sensible location here, because usually you see a lot of bottom-mounted power supplies these days. And then there's one more up here, so that's going to give you additional juice for your graphics cards if you're running four high-powered cards in here. Let me see, what else we've got? There's your front panel audio connector, as well as your BIOS battery. And last but not least, we've actually got one more clear CMOS jumper. So you can do it the old-fashioned jumper way, or you can hit either of the two switches up at the top of the board. Now let's have a look at the cooling solution. Now the X58 chipset, as well as the ICH10R Southbridge, they don't really run that hot. It's not really necessary to throw a whole ton of cooling at them, but if you, yeah, you know what, that's basically it. If you want to, ASUS has included an extra heat sink, which you can see straps in right where this piece comes off. So you can leave it passive because you don't need all that cooling, or you can throw an additional one on here, and you can get that additional cooling if you want it, if you're going to be pushing it even harder. So that's, you know what, the spacing actually looks right for SwiftX water block that can mount here as well. So it looks like ASUS has continued their tradition with their high-end Republic of Gamers boards of allowing them to be water-cooled with a third-party piece. That's pretty neat as well. And the cameraman is probably having a look at the, like, black angular heat sink. I really like their new style. And their Republic of Gamers boards have been typically black and red. They've done an exceptional job of making this board look like something you'd really want to put on display in a windowed case. So why don't we have a look at the, oh yeah, let's have a look at the back of the board. Look at that. So they've got the standard backplate for the CPU socket, but they've also got a cooling heat spreader for the back of the PWMs. So that's something you see on the back of boards from time to time, but not really all that often. Last but not least, let's have a look at the I.O. connectivity at the back. So we've got a PS2 keyboard port. We've got one, two, three, four, five, six USB 2.0 ports. This is not a true USB port. That is the ROG Connect port. So that can be used to flash the BIOS in that innovative new way. You plug in the USB with the BIOS on it. You hold this for two seconds and it flashes. Awesome. Next we have a clear CMOS switch here. Optical audio out. E-SATA, Firewire, Gigabit Ethernet. This is, you know what? This is one of those things, again, I have to comment on. I'm so sick of seeing gaming motherboards with, like, two or I've seen up to four Ethernet connections on the back. Why? Gamers need one fast Ethernet connection. That's all. So that's, yeah, just random rant. Then we have two USB 3.0 ports as well as 7.1 audio. Thank you for checking out my unboxing and product overview of the much awaited ASUS Rampage 3 Extreme.