ASUS Intros High-End Rampage III Black Edition Motherboard

It’s not often that I notice an advertisement on our own website of a product I’ve never seen or heard of before, but in the case of ASUS’ Rampage III Black Edition motherboard, I admit, I was caught off-guard. Why is there this great-looking motherboard being shown off, I thought, and we weren’t even given a heads-up? According to Amazon, it’s even been available for about a month!

Although not the best gauge of worth, what caught my eye about the Rampage III BE was the color-scheme. I’m not too sure on whether it beats out GIGABYTE’s P67A-UD7 for me in terms overall aesthetics for an all-around board, but as far as gaming motherboards go, I’d be hard-pressed to see a better-looking option than the Rampage III BE.

While a board like any model from GIGABYTE’s G1. series focuses primarily on gamers, and even shows that off with the aesthetics, ASUS chose to stick to an overall black color scheme, with red accents, and overall, I think the result is excellent. Aside from its looks, though, what might be most noticeable with this board is the “ThunderBolt” combo NIC/Audio card, enabling the use of the Killer E2100 NIC, and also Xonar audio.

After taking a look through the board’s product page, I gave ASUS a call to delve a bit further into details and see what it is that makes this board so unique, and worth its $590 price tag. Yup… $590.

It’s hard to call the ThunderBolt add-in card much of an advantage, as it includes better-than-stock audio and networking just as the G1. boards do. But from a personal perspective, I’d take ASUS’ Xonar audio over an X-Fi card any day, as it’s more of a well-rounded offering; great for both music and gaming. As an added perk, the ThunderBolt card features an on-board amp, so that regardless of whatever pair of headphones you are using, the card will be more than capable of delivering as much power as you’ll need it to (64 – 600 ohms).

If there’s an immediate downside to the ThunderBolt card, it’s that it’s an actual add-in card, which compared to the fully integrated solution of GIGABYTE’s G1, seems less-than-ideal. According to ASUS, however, this design choice was done on purpose, because it feels that in order to deliver the best performance possible, and to have both components work as they are designed to, an add-in card was a much better solution. Seeing as both Xonar cards and Killer NICs do come as add-in cards in their original state, I can understand where ASUS is coming from, but I completely lack the skills to verify the true differences.

In addition, it’s the small things ASUS says that make its board worth the premium. For example, while the G1. doesn’t have much of an emphasis on overclocking (GIGABYTE asked us to not focus on overclocking our sample), the Rampage III BE is designed to be an all-around board, perfect for any type of user. That includes enthusiast, overclockers, and those who need to run a reliable, feature-filled workstation.

ASUS also mentioned that while GIGABYTE has failed to adopt more reliable LAN solutions on its boards (something I do agree with, since the LAN ports on my X58A-UD5 have become problematic), ASUS has adopted Intel NICs for most of its higher-tier line-up, including the Rampage III BE. This is a very good thing, as in our tests, during heavy loads, Intel NICs outshine the competition (namely, Realtek… we haven’t tested a Marvel up to this point). It might seem odd that ASUS includes an Intel NIC on this board given it already bundles in the Killer E2100, but the reason is twofold. In case you want to use the Intel NIC for another purpose, you can, and if you ever want to repurpose the ThunderBolt card for another machine (which is possible), you’ll not be left without a NIC on this board.

Last but not least, the board also includes Bluetooth, which is a nice addition (and should have been standard long, long ago as far as I am concerned), and also WiFi. “WiFi?!?”, you ask? Again, this is another solution for those who want it, and in the event that you want to use the ThunderBolt card in another machine, it’s just another option.

To learn more about this board, you can check out the full product page linked-to below. If I can get myself out from under this huge pile of boards that I have built up, I’ll see about getting one of these bad boys in and put it through its paces.