Asus Rampage V Extreme - review FlanK3r

[FlanK3r]

The highend of highends. The 16 threads in desktop with DDR4, crazy multithread speed, awesome power consumption for this performance. This is Haswell-E and X99. And a bit more with the best of the best - Rampage V Extreme.


Black Edtion, sound of future?





64 GB of Memory DDR4. 2400 MHz XMP cl15.



1. - Before all descriptions, benchmarks etc. You need something knowledge of theory.

I will write only most interesting things from my side, because all about theory you can easily find at http://rog.asus.com/?s=x99&submit.x=0&submit.y=0.


OC socket and DRAM support. X99 is new in DDR4 support. DDR4 are working by Jedec at 1.2V 2133 MHz. The latencies are in theory a bit higher, but with reworked IMC in Haswell-E doesnt matter because are very quick and good OC able also. Rampage is uspport 3300+ MHz DRAM clocks! Wow. We will see, how good are my 2400 XMP HyperX . The red slots are your first Quadchannel. The black are secondary priority slots...


OC socket is more pins in LGA. The CPU has more pads than standart LGA2011-v3 socket. So, why can not try more conection as servers Haswell-EP? More pins in Asus MBs X99 are good for better stability in high OC. Example if your CPU could run at 1.35V with some LLC, there are overvoltages jumps and drops. You know the most straight flatline is the best for stability. So LLC helping in this case a bit (no drops, no crahs in load). The next pins could be electrically conected to IMC of CPU. The biggest differencies with OC socket I have seen in OC of DRAMs and Cache. With OC socket you can get cache around 4 GHz or more at good aircooling!


PCie slots 3.0 are from CPU directly. But not all X99 CPUs have the same number of PCIe lines . I7-5960X+5930K have awesome 40 lines and the cheapest one 5820K-i7 has "only" 28 lines. So the red slots are with SLI/Crossfire different by CPus inside . 5820K can use 3 GPUs in 16-8-8. The 5930K+5960X 4x GPUs as 16-8-8-8.
The black slot is PCIe 2.0 from PCH...

 

[FlanK3r]

The Rampage is the board with most records. Now is a bit different, some WRS changed, but still most of them, including new, are with R5E.



The classic of X99. There "must be" new SATA Express and M.2 PCIe conectors. The M.2 up to 110mm lenght. Dual Band Wifi modul+transceiver have now three antennas. Of course 802.11ac standard.



Power design of motherboard for CPU is slightly modified. There is PowerIR mosfet, its including low and high mosfet and small driver together. Its better for example for lower EMI and better for accuracy of signal. Lower temps and of course all this means better effectivity of VRM. Also new microfine chokes with tights granules and better "cooling". In hard OC high currnet hungry CPUs is good VRM very important.



The best OC man with love to overclokers ...This could be simply what is this area. New functions as Retry Button and Safe Boot are helpfull with benchamrking at limits. Because at the limits you can get issues as frozing your PC, black screen, BSOD without restart etc. Safe mode get your PC to safe mode post and after directly to BIOS with last values. You can change it to same another for next boot and benchamrking.
Retry Button is similar, but your system is posting with BIOS values again, the same which frozed in OS benchmarking. If your PC frozed before, ussually you must shutdown your PSU, then active PSU, start PC and waiting for message "overclocking failed". With Retry button going your motherboard to "restart" mode with same BIOS settings. Sorry for my english here. In Czech language its more easy explain it (oh, I have so bad vocabulary ).
At OC zone is PCIe slot switch, reset, start buttons, MEM OK, Slow Mode switch and LN2 jumper.


I like this. The OC Panel you can join with one/two cables to MB and directly overclocking with Panel. Im using it ussually at M6E. In next weeks Il try with R5E and Crossblade Ranger too.


DirectCU from GPUs to VRM as new . Not bad. Cool your VRM more effective .

 

[FlanK3r]

The Rampage has many fan headers by PWM/DC and thermal conectors also. Some thermal cables are in accessories of the board. 4 thermals points are monitoring directly.


description of the board



Box from top side is classic ROG, red color of big box with eATX board inside and information about model, bonus as OC Panel and support of operation systems, CPU and GPUs.


Back side of the box is more specific - the highlight features description and full specification + IO panel schema.


Half opened box . You can watch at board in safe place, there are enxt information also...


Inside of the BOX is the motherboard and some big acessories. The motherboard is really looking great. I think, the most beautiful Rampage in history, maybe one of the greatest looking board ever.



The accessories is full of the box. There are many

• SATA cables
• SLI/CF bridges
• door tag
• stickers for cable description
• manual
• Wifi antenna
• X-socket (2011v3 to 1366)
• OC Panel cables
• OC Panel
• Q-connectors

The most important could be this. The X-socket help you, if your old cooler or LN2 pot not support 2011 socket. Of course, this is main problem for me with LN2 pot. Petri Korhonen is good guy, but he could not know nothing about 2011 socket in year 2010 )). X-socket change your default 2011 bracket to the LGA1366 bracket. You are safe now.
WiFi modul at MB is with 3 antenas, support 802.11ac.

 

[FlanK3r]

OC Panel

OC Panel is in basic mode HW monitoring and classic auto OC toy in your 5.25" position. But for extreme mode is nice thing. Connect it with motherboard (ROG extender) cable and play it (or update firmware). There are nice features as VGA Hotwires, 4x fan connectors, Slow mode switch and Pause switch. Both are helpfull with LN2 OC .


So take some minutes to the motherboard description. Its my favorite part

The motherboard is eATX format. So the 30.5 cm x 27.2 cm big. Color scheme is red and black. The characteristic for ROG boards and its good. The power connectors are 8+4 pin for CPU and 24-pin ATX at the board. Light issue can be with CPU connectors, Il write about it at different paragraph. Design of pasives is awesome. Really, I like design of ROG many years and every year are good looking. At both side of CPU socket are 4 memory slots. So this CPU support Quadchannel settings (2+2 or 4+4). Be careful with choice of memor or aircooler. With high pasives DRAMs you can have issues with your cooler. But of course, you can buy some new as Noctua NHD15 - this is ready for high RAM modules...I must did small mode . The motherboard support 64/128 GB DDR4 up to 3300 MHz OC.
The motherboard has 3 desing pasives. One PCH, big size, but not tall. The VRM pasive which is cooling mosfets IR directly. There is realy direct contact with VRM! So more effective in cooling. The last part is over IO part and separates heatpipe from DRAM area. The motherboard has 5x PCIe slots. More about PCIe slots I write later...Motherboard has great conectivity in SATA ports, USB 3.0, M.2 and SATA Express. Again more words coming in different part of review.


Backside of the motherboard is classic in ROG. They dont forget at coold down the backside of VRM. If you do not believe, try cool your old board from back side with some air 120mm fan and you can see little differents in OC potential and temps.


There are PCIe slots. In first chapter I said, number of PCIe 3.0 lines depends at CPU. Remember it. The red slots are directly to CPU, the black are to PCH (so 2.0 mode). The reds are x16, but primary slot is the first one. For SLI/CF with two GPUs you can use 1+3 red slots. Your GPUs will working both in x16 mode! Would like use more cards? No problem. Three cards will working as 16+8+8 with all X99 CPUs. Four cards as 16+8+8+8 (only for 5930K and 5960x). Be aware the 4th red slot is share the lines with M.2. So if you using M2 at X4, the last red slot will be working only in x4 mode.
At the motherboard are long black x16 (working at x4 max) slot and short one x1. These are from PCH and of course 2.0 standard. Both slots are sharing x4 lines. These x4 lines are sharing not only with PCIe long and short black, but with SATA Express and added USB 3.0 too (two USB ports under LAN connector).


Your M.2 can be now very, very long and with good capacity . You can find in lenght 2260/2280/22110 (last 3 chars are lenght in mm). Of course, M.2 PCIe x4 . More about M.2 SSD here

 

[FlanK3r]

There is SATA part. You can see 8x SATA 6GB/s ( working Raid 0, 1, 5, 10) and next dual SATA Express conectors. If you do not use this Sata Express, you have next four SATA 6GB/s. Of course, in this time is hard to find some SATA Express devices in shops. AT right of photo is USB 3.0 port for two front USB3 connectors, example at front the case.


The back IO conectivity is great. You can see from left to right: BIOS flashback button/CLR CMOS, ROG Connect button, PS2+2x USB2.0 (ideal for keyboard/mouse), 10x USB 3.0, LAN Gigabit conector, WIFI/BT module (Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac + Bluetooth v4.0) and audio outputs.


The bottom line of MB is fitted in front audio, EZ molex connector, TPM header, small T-sensor connector, soundstage button, two BIOS chips, USB 3.0 port, 2x fan connector PWM/DC, USB 2.0 port, ROG Extendor connector (For OC Panel/Frontbase panel etc), case connectors and red button for BIOS 1/2 switch.


Now is time for easy description of board. I was lazzy to removed heatsinks, but most of important is to see in theory screen in first post and its logical. Some chips are under big PCH heatsink and maybe some part for PCH power.
The red color area means CPU power suply. Its 8x digital controling phases with IR3555M powerpack mos, Nichicon caps and new microfine alloy chokes. The MB main controller is near the first DRAM DIMs, colored in pink. Second area in blue color is digi power for DRAMs. There are two areas with separate controllers. One DRAM power area = 2 phases. Again with pink colored controllers . And of course, there must be power for PCH - in yellow area color. Yeallow highlighted oblongs are PWM/DC connectors for CPU/chassis fans. Green areas are CPU 8-pin power and 24-pin ATX for MB power. You can see red and blue arrows, red arrows means PCIe lines from CPU and blue from PCH. I forgot marked for PCIe x1 from PCH.

Some details of the motherboard and chips
The layout of the motherboard is great. I have no objections as user. Only there is little, little issue. Where?


The CPU Power connectors are very close to the heatsink. With classic PSU connector you will very tight to the heatsink. You must put it inside with caution.

 

[FlanK3r]

Inside of OC socket


In the corners of LGA2011v3 LGA are extra pins for more power and few grounds pins. These pins helping in more stable OC during hardload and for extra MHz in memory and cache frequency.


The main CPU power controler ASP1257 (digi+)


Superspeed ASM1074 USB3.0 chip



Many PCIe ASM1480, 16 to 8 channel multiplexer. And at second screen is clock generator from ICS.


Nuvoton IO chip NCT6791D


Positions for M.2 device

 

[FlanK3r]

Sound area with SupremeFX2014 - including ALC1150+ELNA audio capacitors+shielding of audio chip+isolating PCB part for audio+audio amp. Its 8 channel audio with special functions as DTS, Soundstage+software Sonic Studio and Sonic Radar 2. More about it you can read here: http://rog.asus.com/forum/showthrea...r-FM2-ROG-gift&p=425744&viewfull=1#post425744

or video [video=youtube;GuUVXFRUYVA]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuUVXFRUYVA&list=UUJXfmRezJja_lW9sz2RNi8A[/video]

Last one in description of board is OC area in one corner of board. The DRAM power you can see here also.

How working new buttons SafeBoot and Retry button? Easy way for you will be this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3D9QuKo4-M

BIOS+software


We will talking about software in short. The main is software Ai Suite with 5-way optimization. Its logic from next screenshot, what means 5-ways


5-way:
-TPU for OC settings
-Fan Xpert 3 for PWM/autofan tunning etc
-digi+ power control for driving the phases etc
-Turbo App. for priority of process in audio, LAN, CPU performance
-EPU for lower power consumption etc


Fan Xpert for tuning the airflow in PC


Turbo aplication


Next is gaming (and not only for gamnmg) application Gamefirst III with profiles, priorities...

 

[FlanK3r]

Sonic Radar as little gaming help



Keybot software with binded macros , you can to use F1-F10 keys. F11, F12 and delete are predefined


Audio software of SupremeFX is in Czech language too! With front audio connectors you have higher active menu with Soundstage functions and complete Sonic Studio settings.


BIOS
at righ side of BIOS screen you can controll your HW information. Voltages, clocks, temps.



My Favorites, you can easy add your ussually BIOS items to Favorites.


MAIN - info about BIOS, iROG chips etc...


EXTREME TWEAKER - bookmark for tweaking and overclocking. Yeallow part show your current values before saving it (targets). As you can see, example your manual DRAM profiles are up to 4000 MHz!


predefined OC Profiles for this monster. 4, 4.2 or 4.4 GHz. Nice.

 

[FlanK3r]

Back to memory...Now its about timings and driving. This part is very deep and its around 6+ displays with scrolling The DDR4 are very good for OC or down the timings.



This part is for voltage changes


For OC is important part Digi power controls. With right LLC you can get more stable settings, no drops. Ussually some peaks of overvolting at highest LLC, there is 9 choices


CPU current


ADVANCED SETTINGS for CPU, PCH, SA, USB, AUDIO, LAN, APM, ROG effects.

 

[FlanK3r]

At Asus X99 boards you can enable/disable core one per one . For highest validation/superpi frequency the best.


In SA is settings for your GPU and PCie lines too.


Next part is monitoring - so voltages, temps and regulation of fans. There is auto tuning of fans also as QFan tunning.



This is example, how the QFan Tunning working


BOOT settings


TOOLS


In Tools GPU post, I use GPU in 3rd slots, because I need some airflow with my moded Noctua NHD14.

 

[FlanK3r]

Menu of EZ Flash


ROG SSD Secure Erase


Settings for stock benchmarks+bonus Noctua NHD14 moding
CPU: i7-5960X
MB: Rampage V Extreme
DRAMs: one Quadchannel 4x 8GB HyperX predator 2133 MHz 15-15-15-36-2T (XMP is 2400MHz cl15)
GPU: Asus Radeon R9-270X DCII OC
Cooling system: Noctua NHD14






But... Noctua is too big and Predators too. SO I had conflict with DRAM heatsinks and Noctua. I must cut off a lot of heatsink.


The Noctua at default position. With this I can use only dual DRAM settings or some low profile DDR4 modules...
So I found handsaw in the closet and veryblunt saw.



I cut 6 fins and finally I could use Quadchannel

 

[FlanK3r]

Finally some air test at stock:

CPU-Z in idle (CPU working at 1200MHz, cache at 1200 also):



CPU-Z in load (look at frequency CPU cores, cache)




Maximum temps in hard load for shorter time were 52-57 C


If you are benchmarking Superpi at stock, be sure with affinity, otherwise your score will be bad (or disable C states+eist). Look at this:

 

[FlanK3r]

Graphs at stock settings
So there are some benchamrks at stock settings (2133 DRAM) and comparison with another performance CPUs at stock. NOTE: i7-4770K is tested with early BIOS at Z87 board and of course without Asus multicore


-5960X has the lowest CPU frequency, so this is the reason of score




-in AIDA memory tests are monters awesome. Look at all 12 or 16 logical cores CPU


-wprime is so quickly


-y-cruncher support AVX and FMA too, 5960x is first CPU with under 100 seconds results


-Fritzchess and over 20k


-Cinebench R10, interesting Haswell-E is here (with lower CPU clock) similar as high clocked 4960x. 4770K is dominating here.

 

[FlanK3r]

-What say here? 5960x is great and more than grait again.


-1080P video encoding x264 is really stress for CPU. You can see and know the 4770K is really very good CPU for video working. But in comparison with Haswell-E....Wow


-AIDA Hash test



-compression and decompression test


-this test supporting more cores, but not all threads. Its editing of few photos in x3f to jpeg format. The 5960x is in couple with 3930K. For i7-4770K is winning here.


-3D Mark11 CPU score.

 

[FlanK3r]

-Far Cry II at 1680x1050 with high details in DX10, its still good for CPU test. I have no tested 3930K and 4960X here, so I put result with FX-8350 and Pentium G3258. Interesting the FX-8350 is second here. Maybe the low clock of 5960X and the card R9-270X OC is no limit for this CPU...


- World in Conflict with medium details. And there is clear win for 5960X. Look at the differencies. Pentium is last one, interesting are the lowest frames too. Pentium had only 8 FPS, FX 64 FPS and 5960X 89FPS.


Modern game resolutin FHD and back to 3930K+4960X....The differencies with Radeon R9-270X DCII OC are very small.

Finally is time for last graph and this is power consumption. I must tell, the 5960X is awesome in this. Because if you looking at performance, the Watts in load and idle are so effective and still very low.


Now is the memory part here.

I have XMP 2400 MHz HyperX Predator with settings 1.35V and timings 16-16-16-39-2T. This is stock settings for these RAMs

I tested the performance and stability in Hyperpi 16M with 16 threads together. Some bandwith I measured in AIDA and MaxxMem too. First stock XMP settings. For 24/7 I think, around 1.45 V at RAM could be OK. Remember, inb BIOS settings you have two DRAM voltages! One is for post and second for "windows". Its good set both similar. Sometimes if your boot failed with BSOD, and you dont want higher voltages, the RETRY button help you.

 

[FlanK3r]

How perform it with tighter timings at 2400 MHz?

2400 MHz 15-14-14-35-1T







2400 MHz 14-13-13-33-1T







2400 MHz 12-12-12-27-1T

 

[FlanK3r]

2400 MHz 11-11-12-23-1T







2666 MHz settings


2666 MHz 14-13-13-29-1T







2666 MHz 13-13-13-27-1T

 

[FlanK3r]

3200 MHz settings

16-16-16-37-1T







3200 MHz 15-15-16-37-1T







3200 MHz 14-15-16-37-1T

 

[FlanK3r]

Final result for 3200 MHz settings:

3200 MHz 14-15-16-35-1T






If you like more results, you can find few others here in my album: https://www.flickr.com/photos/20698985@N05/sets/72157648542583436/

 

[FlanK3r]

Memory tab with results. The red are best, light red second and light blue third best results...

 

[FlanK3r]

Cache overclocking

So, today is part about cache tweaking. Cache can help a bit performance overall. The most improvements you will see in memory and cache bandwith. Its logic, because with higher cache clocks (ring clocks) the CPU get lower latencies inside. In 3D Mark you focus at physics score.

In all test the CPU is running at 4 GHz CPU clock and with DRAM at 3200 MHz cl15.



As you can see, with higher cache frequency you can get better results. SOmetimes not much, but if you find the best scores is every point important .

 

[FlanK3r]

Part with max OC benchmarks.
This CPU is nothing special. I mean, sample of average chips in 60-70% of users (because most users will be not showing how bad CPU is in OC )

We know, max stable settings is 4300 MHz (If you read last chapter). So I hoped for 4400 MHz. And this is exactly the limit of the CPU with my cooling.

Cinebench R11.5, with higher cache I got freeze at this CPU clock.


HWBot PRIME at 4411 MHz


Wprime 32M and Wprime 1024M 8C/16T 4400 MHz



Winrar 8C/16T, wow almost 22k KB/s



need it more voltage


8c/8t Superpi 32M 4536 MHz and 4549 MHz




Max Superpi 4C/4T. CPU vcore now at 1.45V, 4662 MHz

 

[FlanK3r]

Max Superpi 32M 4c/4t, 4623 MHz



Max idle 4C/4T 4721 MHz, 1.45V