ASUS ROG Rampage V Edition 10 : Intel X99 flagship motherboard shootout: When the sky's the limit

The ASUS ROG Rampage V Edition 10 is by far one of the most extravagant boards we’ve reviewed, and that’s in no way an exaggeration. For starters, its S$949 price tag is enough to scare off all but the most dedicated of enthusiasts (there are motherboard + CPU bundles that cost less). But as they say, you get what you pay for, and the Rampage V Edition 10 certainly delivers in terms of features and performance as you'll see in our performance findings page.

ASUS’ Rampage boards have traditionally represented the pinnacle of what the company has to offer, but ASUS has even more reason to pimp out this year’s Rampage motherboard. We first saw the board at Computex earlier this year, where the Taiwanese company wasted no time in reminding everybody that 2016 marks the 10th anniversary of its Republic of Gamers brand.

The ROG Rampage V Edition 10 is thus named to commemorate the ROG’s brand decade in existence, and it comes tricked out with all manner of hardware finery. LED lights are in? The Rampage V Edition 10 has plenty of that. It also comes with a wide range of the latest ports and connectors, in addition to a bunch of overclocking features and premium components.

In the way of expansion slots, you’ll find four PCIe 3.0 x16 slots, one PCIe 2.0 x4 slot, and a single PCIe 2.0 x1 slot. The distribution of PCIe lanes depends on whether you have a 28- or 40-lane CPU, and there’s a helpful SLI/CrossFire switch included that will make use of the LED embedded under the PCIe slot latches to illuminate the correct slots to install your cards in. For example, a two-way setup will require you to use the first and third slots, while you should populate the top three slots in a three-way configuration.

In addition, the PCIe slots use ASUS’ SafeSlot design, which uses a new insert-molding process to bind the slot with fortifying metal, thus providing extra support on all three axes. Like similar implementations from other board makers, this is intended to protect the slots from the weight of heavy cards and improve longevity.

The board supports up to four-way SLI and CrossFire (with a 40-lane CPU), although as we mentioned before, NVIDIA’s move to support only up to two-way SLI with its Pascal cards suggests that this could soon wind up as a token feature.

A 28-lane CPU will have the slots run in x16/x8 or x8/x8/x8 modes if you have up to three graphics cards. On the other hand, a 40-lane CPU will allow the slots to run in x16/x16, x16/x8/x8, or x8/x8/x8/x8 modes, courtesy of the additional PCIe lanes from the CPU.

But if there’s one area that the Rampage V Edition 10 falls short of the other boards, it’s the number of M.2 slots. ASUS has never been one to include a ton of M.2 slots, and there is just a single M.2 socket beside the RAM slots (and only PCIe SSDs are supported) and no PCIe-to-M.2 adaptor included in the box. That said, the location is ideal as it positions the drive away from heat-generating components like the graphics card.

There is also a U.2 connector next to the SATA ports, which will allow users to plug in a 2.5-inch Intel 750 series SSD without the use of any adapters. Again, this is a rather niche application, but there’s a good chance that there’s an overlap between the user base of that Intel drive and the Rampage V Edition 10.

One thing to note is that the both M.2 and U.2 connectors can be populated simultaneously. Both of them use four PCIe 3.0 x4 lanes each from the CPU, and unless you’re using a four-way x8/x8/x8/x8 graphics setup, they steal lanes from the fourth PCIe slot. This does mean that you’re theoretically able to run four graphics cards and two high-speed storage devices in tandem, which makes for quite an impressive feat.

On top of that, there are a total of 10 SATA 6Gbps ports (there are no SATA Express ports, but realistically that doesn't matter), all of which draw lanes directly from the chipset.

The Rampage V Edition 10 uses an 8+2-phase VRM design – that may appear fewer than what its competitors are offering, but ASUS stressed that it is the design and quality that matters. According to ASUS, the digital power architecture affords full control over the CPU’s Fully Integrated Voltage Regulator (FIVR), and entering manual mode allows overclockers to ignore the behavior of the FIVR and supply steady power to different parts of the CPU.

Furthermore, this is a true 8-phase design, compared to the ASRock X99 Taichi which utilizes a 6-phase design that relies on six phase doublers and two integrated drivers to achieve 12 phases.

ASUS has also used some seriously high-end components in its voltage regulation circuit, including 60A PowlRstage IR3555 MOSFETs, micro-fine alloy chokes for better efficiency, and 10K black metallic capacitors that offer better durability. An extra 4-pin CPU header is also present to supply extra voltage to the CPU during overclocking. In addition, a metal heatpipe connects both VRM heatsinks to help channel heat away from them. The rear I/O shroud is actually comprised of a large aluminum heatsink, so the VRMs can dump a fair bit of heat there via the heatpipe.

That’s not all however, and the board comes with a bunch of extra features to help it stand out from the crowd. This includes a dedicated OC Zone with buttons for LN2 mode, retry, safe boot, and slow mode for extreme overclockers, and PCIe lane and DRAM channel DIP switches to help with troubleshooting.

The rear I/O is also just bristling with ports and connectors, including two USB 3.1 Type-C ports (black), two USB 3.1 Type-A ports (red), four USB 3.0 ports (blue), and two USB 2.0 ports. It’s nice to see two USB-C ports here, but one glaring omission for a board this expensive is the lack of a dedicated Thunderbolt 3 port (there is a onboard Thunderbolt 3 header for an ASUS ThunderboltEX add-in card). When you’re paying this much, you should literally have nothing missing.

That said, other useful additions include the integrated I/O shield, which saves you considerable trouble during installation. ASUS has also thrown in a dedicated water pump header and high amperage fan header for PWM fans up to 3A or DC fans up to 1A. What’s more, all onboard fan headers are equipped with automatic PWM/DC detection, so you don’t have to worry about compatibility.

In comparison, the Gigabyte and MSI motherboards have separate headers for PWM and voltage-mode fans, so the ASUS board really makes installation a lot simpler because you don’t have to hunt for the correct headers.

We particularly like the 3x3 wireless solution, which supports speeds up to 1,300Mbps. This is the fastest offering out of all the boards, and is courtesy of the Broadcom BCM94360 chip (instead of the 2x2 Intel solution on competing products).

On the audio front, the SupremeFX audio solution on the Rampage V Edition 10 is in quite a class of its own with premium Nichicon audio capacitors, dual headphone amplifiers, and EMI protection cover. Furthermore, the board ships with the SupremeFX Hi-Fi front panel headphone amp that utilizes ESS’ flagship Sabre 9018K2M 32-bit DAC and high-end amplifiers for even better sound.

Above all, this is a board designed to look as good as it performs, so you also get five independent zones (expansion slots, PCH heatsink, I/O shroud, ROG logo, and the backplate) of Aura RGB lighting that can also be synced with a compatible ASUS card. In addition, a separate 4-pin header will take up to a 2-meter 5050 RGB LED strip for an added burst of color to the system. Here's a sneak peek of it in action:-