ASUS ROG RAMPAGE IV BLACK EDITION LGA 2011 Intel X79 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Extended ATX Intel Gaming Motherboard

Pros: - Ridiculously easy to set up. Everything is labeled and the manual is extremely detailed. - Looks fantastic in a windowed case. Dark PCB and LED lights, a ROG logo, and a boot readout. - UEFI works well, and aside from a brief issue getting my mouse and keyboard to work on boot, has given me no issues. - SPACE! The whole reason I decided to build my own system again was my extraterrestrial brand desktop would not let me fit SLI graphics and a soundcard at the same time. (Which is %$#^ for a gaming desktop.) - RAM - wow, you can fit so many RAM sticks on here.

Cons: - So expensive, and there aren't a lot of LGA 2011 boards left to choose from if you want a decent feature set. - Stuff you probably don't need stuffed in to make it more expensive. An overclocking remote/LCD screen. What do I do with this? Expensive on-board audio - already have a soundcard I love.

Overall Review: I've had it running 2 weeks + with no issues. (Well, except you have to plug the mouse and keyboard into the right USB slots or they won;t work at boot, which is annoying.) I have 2 super expensive Klevv RAM sticks running alongside my OEM extraterrestrial ram - which has entirely different specs - and it works fine. (A testament to the board and the Klevv RAM) I would have picked up a newer board with a more modern socket, but my Intel i7-45930K from my extraterrestrial brand PC still kicks &^%$, so I didn't see any need to spend money on a processor that wasn't any better just to get a newer board. I've always had good luck with Asus, so I felt like sticking with them. (2 gaming laptops, Android tablets, a phone, and a ton of video cards, not to mention prior motherboards.)

Pros: WOW! I mean, where to start! O.C. Panel: I saw some comments out there that some joes were upset about the short cable for the ROG Doohickey. Well, it is short for a reason! There are two ways to utilize this device. If you place it in the drive bay, it is a quick O.C./Fan Control/Extreme Mode Controller, etc. If you have your case open you can utilize the "Open-Air" mode. You connect your fans to the O.C. Panel, and other pertinent connections and it will allow you to set your BIOS settings on the fly, while the system is running, so on, and so forth. REALLY COOL for Advanced Enthusiasts, not just your regular enthusiast can utilize the full potential of this board. Probably the most important, most acknowledge, and more useful pro of this piece of technology is the troubleshooting it offers. There are so many trouble codes that are very specific. And the LEDs? They actually helped me address a failed SSD! It lit up to the exact SATA Cable it couldn't get to, and then I just traced it. Dual BIOS's offer you to update one and keep the older, maybe more stable version if the new one failed. Built in 802.11ac WiFi, BT, On Board Start/Reset, Direct Restart to BIOS, RAM Test, Voltage Reading Terminals. There is a small switch on the mother board for those CPUs out there that sometimes crash during cool down. Well, you flip this switch and it drops the temp in increments. Lights up really cool too!

Cons: Zip Zero Nada

Overall Review: Test Software was provided by ASUS ROG. Testing Game: BF4 Environment: Intel Core i7 4820-K O.C. to 4.9GHz G.SKILL Ripjaws Z 32GB DDR3-2133 Quad Kit NVidia GeForce GTX 780 Ti Corsiar AX1200 PSU Corsiar H100i CPU Liquid Cooled Radiator with Fans Windows 8.1 x64

Pros: I bought this board about a month ago for a new system build. My main thoughts at the time were initially to buy a dual socket ASUS server board - but after reading that the 4960X would not work in a dual configuration I decided to go with this board. It comes in a really well packaged case, lots and lots of technical discussion on overclocking and some really great things can be done with this board. It's tough - it doesn't really flex like cheap motherboards can. The components are top shelf, and there is a high following of gaming and overclocking enthusiasts. Probably can run Linux, and Xen but Windows is the only truly supported operating system on this board. And that's a shame because SteamOS would be great on this board. If you have 2-4 video cards having support for Xen would be even better. This board should be capable, but sadly the support just isn't there (yet?) More on that topic below. The software that comes with the board is okay, but a lot is un-necessary. Out of the box there are several drivers that are needed, make sure to read the farking manual about this system before you set it up. There are so many bells and whistles and configuration options. UEFI and BIOS booting is supported, though it seems like it's a hack on UEFI. You'll want to tweak a bunch of these settings when you get this thing going - the post screen it's a bit slow at boot time. My configuration consists of 2x GTX 780 TI video cards, 64GB of G.Skill Ripjaw ram, 4 Intel 530 Series 240GB SSDs and 2 Toshiba 3TB drives for storage. This system takes a while to boot, but once it's going it's really fast. (Most of the boot time again is the UEFI loading, and a bit of a set delay for all the SATA devices to go through their thing) All this said it's a great almost perfect board - the technical capabilities are a amazing - there are points for taking measurements and instructions in the manual on overclocking and taking reading directly off the running board. There's even a hardware switch for bus clock control if you're cooling with nitrogen. It's so technical, but it's also probably one of the downfalls of this board. Battlefield 4 and all other games run amazingly well, my NVIDIA shield works great with this system as well, though that's hardly due to the motherboard, but the onboard wireless is great. There are still a few drivers missing for hardware in windows though. Now for the things I dislike about the board below.

Cons: Support for IOMMU, VT/d and NVIDIA GRID is pretty much impossible with this board. Linux will boot. UEFI is evil (Not because of the usual complaints, but it's implemented in a really weird way with this system, and boot devices clash somewhat thanks to having both ASUS SATA controller and an Intel SATA controller) If your main goal with this board is to build a Xen/KVM Gaming PC. Stop. Don't buy this board. Support for Xen and Linux is limited and response from ASUS on the subject isn't all that great either. If you have a ton of money to pump into a system but could care less about using it for things other than gaming then this is the board for you. I'm sure other boards would be just as capable and far cheaper for 4x16 PCI-X slots, and probably support Linux as well. It's a shame really for such a technically advanced motherboard, with all of the PROs that go with this system I feel like the price is too high for what you get. It feels more like buying a status symbol than a capable board with these features disabled. ASUS is a good company, and it's more likely that this board could be far more capable with BIOS updates supporting the above mentioned things. Also they should start working with Valve to get SteamOS working on this system with full support for all of the hardware. I know it's in Beta but I could seriously see SteamOS as an alternate boot option for a lot of gamers. The SATA controllers seemed like they would be a good combo, but in hindsight it seems like they're only good if you're using 2-3 drives and don't really want to mess with things like RAID or if you want RAID10. I really don't understand why they wouldn't go with an all Intel Controller onboard, especially at this price point, and why not have all connectors be 6Gb/sec connectors - aren't they backwards compatible? Would be awesome if this was the case - right now I'm still trying to figure out the best drive configuration. I've got the Intel RAID0 going for the Windows install, but I'm not sure where to go with the other drives as this configuration leaves a bit to be desired.

Overall Review: ASUS should get up and start working on BIOS updates and start supporting SteamOS NOW. Along with that IOMMU, VT/x and VT/d should be enabled. They're enabled in my CPU, but the board does not support these.

Pros: Awesome ASUS support replaced one of these with broken pins at no cost to me. Paired with Ivy Bridge - E 4930K and GSKILL 2666 DDR3 RAM. Stable as a rock. UEFI BIOS has many features to fine tune the rig.

Cons: 1st board still worked but not to 100%. Found there were broken pins. Was outside 30 day newegg return- contacted ASUS. Had a brand new replacement board 7 days later.

Overall Review: RMA was fast and pain free. Have a 2nd set of items that came in the box. Very happy with this purchase and I would purchase again!

Pros: Was a Gigabyte fan for over 14 years. First ASUS build since that time. Was waiting for the right board and it showed. This board is well worth the money. Love this flash bios. So easy. The board smokes with-out the smoke.

Cons: None so far.

Overall Review: This is a new build, ASUS Rampage Black, Thermaltake 1375, 2 Evga 780ti's, 64 gig G.Skill 1600, 4,460 OCZ-Vertex's 120 gig, 2 Samsung's 256 gig, i7-4820K.

Pros: This board is awesome (once it works). The BIOS is one of the best i have ever used and provides you with so many things to adjust i think i could spend a couple months just figuring things out. It is also a great board to pair with an i7-4930k. Probably one of the most powerful setups i have built.

Cons: The first board i got had defective RAM slots, but that could of happened with any MOBO.

Overall Review: Neweggs RMA was really easy to use and they got me a refund really quickly, one of the easiest RMA process i have ever been through.

Pros: This board is excellent. I installed it and it just works. That's one of the best compliments I can give it as many other x79 boards are finicky to say the least. Very robust board. High quality 3rd party chips with drivers that just WORK. The UEFI is very deep, yet not intimidating. It was easy to update to the later revision via windows. Dual UEFI incase something were to go wrong. I easily have my 4930k at 4.6 on the board. The on board sound is very good. Not quite as good as a high end sound blaster, but only a notch below. I love it - I don't have to fill a PCIE slot with a card anymore so there is more room for GPU's! The OC Panel thing is a very nice touch. I still prefer going into the UEFI for adjustments, but I am a creature of habit.

Cons: Not much, The price with Assassins Creed made it worth it. Without that incentive it does feel $50 high.

Overall Review: After some adjustments in the UEFI this thing boots to WIN 8.1 desktop in 13 seconds! ROCK SOLID. I have left it on for weeks with zero issues. I've run prime95 for two days straight no problem. I'm running a 4930k at 4.6 (1.34v offset) Titans in Tri-SLI all on water. SS 840 pro SSD. Incase anyone is contemplating this board and water cooling I don't think its necessary to water cool the boards vreg or chipset as from my personal testing it runs fine without it and I have no OC restrictions I can see.

Pros: Easy to setup. When small issues are worked out will be the best X79 board out there. Looks sick.

Cons: Some BIOS issues. Still has issues with 64GB of RAM just like the Rampage IV Extreme. Would thing Asus would have it worked out by now.

Overall Review: Had to RMA my board back to Newegg due to issues recognizing the CPU fan and properly adjusting its PWM speed and for causing random shutdown/reboots on Windows 8.1. Was able to recognize and Memtest 64GB of G.Skill RAM @ 1333 and 2400. Hope I don't get a refurb replacement board from Newegg or its going straight back.