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The ASUS UEFI bios structure is by far my favourite and after using the Rampage IV for months I know my way around them without even thinking. This bios is very similar … not a bad thing!
We experienced a pain free first boot which was immediately reassuring.
The AI Tweaker panel is very easy to set up, but we will look at this more shortly. The board will post at 1333mhz first time to ensure a safe boot, you are best configuring the memory manually or via the XMP profile.
The advanced panel gives easy access to a variety of component configuration settings. Very easy to navigate.
The monitor panel displays all the fan speeds and temperatures of the processor and motherboard. Q-fan settings can be adjusted here to suit.
The boot menu offers very important settings for selecting the boot priority and halt status.
The tool menu has settings for flashing the bios and for saving and loading previously configured parameters.
System validation at default settings was straightforward enough, with no errors flagged. This was before we even installed graphics card drivers.
Our first course of action was to load the X.M.P. profile of the Corsair GTX8 2,400mhz memory. Achieving stability at 4.8ghz was straightforward enough and almost identical to our previous experiences with the 3960X on the Rampage IV Extreme (1.46v). We later found out that ‘load line calibration' could be lowered a little from ‘extreme' in the image shown above. I really can't compliment the ASUS bios configurations enough, they are without a doubt the best in their field.
System validation at 4.8ghz was painless. Slightly higher may have been possible but we really don't like passing 1.47 volts without hardcore cooling. The Corsair H100 however really handled these voltage settings without a problem – peaking around 77c under load.
Overclocking with this board took literally 15 minutes, and most of that was time was for fine adjustments to lower the voltage settings as far as possible once stability was found. It shares very similar settings with the Asus Rampage IV Extreme which is as big a compliment as I could give it.
