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The motherboard arrives in a very stylishly designed heavy duty box with a carrying handle.
The bundle is extremely impressive – you not only get a CrossFire connector, but also two styles of SLI connector to cover both ATI and nVidia platforms. Asus also supplies a temperature probe, a driver disc and a thoroughly well written manual.
There are also 8 high quality SATA Cables, a USB/eSATA bracket, cable ties and an optional bolt on northbridge cooler … if you prefer the active style of cooling.
In addition to Q connectors for easy LED installation there is also a ROG connect cable as well as a BlueTooth RG connect module which also works as a standard Bluetooth dongle.
Let it be said. this is the most comprehensive motherboard bundle I have seen. Honestly I was almost expecting a complimentary voucher for Marks and Spencers right under the manual.
It is a bastard size PCB slightly larger than the ATX standard and it has been documented that it will not fit into certain chassis, such as the Silverstone Fortress FT01. That said this has been designed for hardcore enthusiasts. This won't be an issue for the target audience and we had no problem fitting inside our Lian Li Armorcase, but it is worth a mention.
Pictures cannot not do this board justice. It is such a compelling design, covered in dramatically shaped heatsinks in striking red and black.
Studying the Rampage III Extreme is like taking a masterclass in advanced mainboard design. Untethered by any form of restriction, the Asus engineering team has matched the exceptional featureset with striking flashes of black and red heatsinks. Simply stunning. Writing this review, I'm conscious of exactly how positive it sounds. But that's just the truth. This is a stunning piece of design. No mistake. To balance all this positivity, I'm going to stress that there's only 1 Gbit network port and it is seriously expensive.
The single sided memory slots allow Asus to increase the space between the two primary memory cards without causing issues for memory upgrades.
