ASUS launches new X79 board to cater to the
Micro- ATX fans
We've never expected to see a micro-ATX
board for the X79 series of processors, considering that the Sandy Bridge-E
processors are known to be powerful beasts locked up inside full tower cases
cooled by 10 20mm fans and watercooling systems. ASUS has proven us wrong again
with a variant of their Rampage ROG line of motherboards, the ASUS Rampage IV
GENE.
Clad in a mixture of black and red, similar
to that of most ROG boards, the GENE features four DDR3 DIMM banks, capable of
quad channel memory configuration, four PCIe slots, and six SATA slots, two of
which are 6Gbps, three 3Gbps and one e-SATA 3.0Gbps slot.
Being a micro-ATX board does not mean ASUS
is skimping on the rear ports. Adorning the back plate are eight USB 2.0 ports
(four more mid board), 2 USB 3.0 ports (two more mid board), a PS/2 port, one
optical S/PDIF out port, one clear CMOS button and one ROG Connect switch.
Similar to that of the other ROG
motherboards, the GENE is also built for overclocking, and is packed with
features that are seen in bigger-sized boards. The GENE utilises UEFI which
makes navigation through the BIOS an easier and prettier affair. The board also
is capable of SLI and CrossFireX GPU setups, however depending on the case you
intend to use with it as most mid to high end cards now take up two slots at
the back.
Overclocking-wise, we're glad to say that
the GENE is no slouch. Turning up the core clock multiplier we managed to fire
up our Intel Core i7-3960X all the way to 3.9GHz from 3.2GHz before it decides
to have nothing to do with it anymore. We're pretty sure if you were to play
around with the voltage settings and use a liquid cooling system (on a
micro-ATX system nonetheless) you should get higher clock speeds with no
problems
ASUS Rampage IV GENE
Price $ 403.306
Specifications
Platform: Intel 2011
Form Factor: Micro-ATX
Chipset: X79
Memory type: DDR3
Ratings
Performance 5 stars
Features 4 stars
Design 4 stars
Value 4 stars
