When enabled, the OC Key can display EFI settings and temperatures in a visual overlay that appears over the GPU’s default output. This sits between your screen’s DVI cable and graphics card and has a USB connection that plugs into a header on the PCB. Included in the box, among the usual SATA cables and other bits, is an OC Key connector. This has two ports for standard K-type thermocouples, removing the need to purchase expensive multimeters for taking readings when things get chilly under LN2. Another potentially useful addition is the Subzero Sense connector, a small black box located above the SATA ports. This displays the status of your PCI-E 16x graphics cards and allows you to switch between them to find out which has failed without having to removing them. There’s also an LN2 Mod jumper, which can prevent cold boot bugs during POST.Īlso useful when you’re playing with LN2 and water-cooling is a large red switch box next to the 24-pin ATX power connector. To deal with cold bugs when using liquid nitrogen, a Slow Mode switch has been added to reduce crashes during super-cold benchmarking, where going between full-load and idle can often result in the system freezing. Having flicked through the Rampage’s manual to find out what on earth all the switches and buttons on the PCB do, it’s clear that Asus has pulled out all the stops as far as extreme cooling is concerned. The board is simply begging you to replace these with waterblocks, and it’s as if Asus has designed the Rampage IV Extreme with this in mind, as there’s plenty of space around them and only one small fan located in the Southbridge heatsink.Įven the Sabertooth X79, which costs over £70 less, has an optional fan for the VRMs, but in any event, overclocking the Rampage will require additional cooling for the CPU socket area, whether you use waterblocks or fans. The heatsinks are relatively low-profile, but they’re all linked by a system of heatpipes. The motherboard itself is surprisingly flat compared with the likes of the Sabertooth X79 and ASRock X79 Extreme4 motherboards. This means the Rampage comes under the Extended ATX form factor, so it’s worth making sure that your case can accommodate it before you reach for your quivering wallet. Click to enlargethe pleasure of reviewing – the DIMM sockets, SATA ports and expansion slots are coloured either red or black and the PCB has stretched and reaches to a width of 272mm, compared with the standard ATX size of 244mm.
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