ASUS Rampage V Extreme (LGA 2011-3) Motherboard Review

Final Thoughts

Pricing (accurate at the time of writing)

In the UK the ASUS Rampage V Extreme is available to buy for £334.99 at Overclockers. Over in the USA we are seeing a price tag of $500 at Newegg and Amazon. ASUS provide a 3 year warranty for the R5E.

Summary

I think the best place to start with concluding this review is with the description for the eTeknix Extreme Performance award which reads as follows:

“The Extreme Performance Award – Awarded to products that break the boundaries by offering the best performance in its product range and offers unparalleled performance compared to its rivals. The type of product that will help you break records and give you bragging rights in front of your friends.”

I think it goes without saying that the ASUS Rampage V Extreme does all these things. It offers the best performance we’ve seen for an X99 motherboard, particularly with graphics and memory performance where it excels. The ASUS Rampage V Extreme is the board to have if you want to the best of the best and can afford to pay for it, just like its predecessor was.

However, I don’t want to sandbox the Rampage V Extreme into a performance silo: this motherboard is about much more than just performance. The founding “ideology” of the Rampage Extreme series may have been about offering the best performance, but it now offers the best of everything else too. It can act as a viable workstation motherboard offering enough PCIe, USB, Storage and Networking connectivity for even the most demanding user. Not to mention a level of component quality and attention to detail that would make it reliable enough for professional use. It could also function as the heart of a gaming system thanks to its high quality networking with packet prioritisation software, its high quality audio implementation and the support for multiple GPU configurations that will allow you to push out games at 4K resolutions or even with huge frame rates to take advantage of some of the new 144Hz monitors that came out recently – notably the ASUS ROG Swift PG278Q.

Finding points of criticism about the R5E is difficult but I think a few things are noteworthy. For a board that has so much connectivity it seems a tragic shame to have not implemented dual LAN, especially when ASUS provide solid HomeCloud software which would be able to make great use of it. For example Realtek’s RTL8111GR Gigabit ethernet supports wake-on-WAN whereas Intel’s Gigabit does not meaning you need a LAN client to wake it up. Secondly, I feel like the OC panel is an unnecessary addition. Most people won’t use it, the 5.25 inch bay is a nice touch to give it more potential use but I’m still not so sure. I think the bulk of prospective R5E buyers would take a price cut for the OC panel to be sold as a separate extra.

Pros

• Brilliant performance
• Sophisticated and reliable UEFI BIOS
• Best-in-class software package
• Impressive range of connectivity
• Amazing memory performance and overclocking

Cons

• Expensive – OC panel isn’t necessary
• No Dual-LAN

“A premium platform like X99 deserves a premium motherboard and that’s exactly what the ASUS Rampage V Extreme offers. Class leading performance, connectivity, quality and features make the R5E the ultimate motherboard for any consumer.”

Thank you to ASUS for providing this review sample.