Intel X48 Motherboard Round-up: ASUS, ECS, Intel

No matter how you look at it Asus is the king! That Rampage is one great looking board.$300.00 is a lot of cash to put out but if I had it I drfinatly would pony it up.My computer is my hobby and having the fastest I can get with stability is my goal no matter how limited my finances are!

Nice roundup. Loving the asus board

Edit: Just put two and to together. That's my new intel board! You guys seem to agree with other reviews in that overclocking the board is a exercise in fustration. Guess I'll hold off on throwing my water setup in there untill some new bios come out.

In this artical the following statement is not entirerly correct, regarding the ASUS Rampage Formula

 "The smaller Southbridge heatsink is branded as a member of the RoG, and has a heatpipes extending from it and leading to the large copper heatsink over the Northbridge"

I have this mobo and while i was adding a water cooled notrth bridge block (Zalman ZM-NWB1) to the notrthbridge i obviously had to remove the stock north and southbridge heat sink and to my suprise found that the heat sink assembaly was way to light to be copper, it has a copper heat pipe that runs all the way through it and a copper plate right where the north bridge sits, but what looks to be a farily big copper heat sink is acttually a alloy heat sink anodised to look copper, very missleading and down right dishonest in my opinion.

ASUS have not made claim in any of their documentation that the heatsink is copper but the reviewer of this artical made the same asumption i did when i purchased this mobo, that the north bridge heat sink looks like a large all copper heat sink which is incorrect.

All you really need to do to confirm this is run a screwdriver edge along a part of the heat sink (scraching the surface) and you will see the silver alloy below

I feel this is very deseptive and while the heat sink probably needs anodising it could have been just about any colour but ASUS choose a very close to copper colour, in my opinion to fool consumers.

I think this mobo is a great board very easy to OC, and reliable, but i hate being cheated and thats how i feel about this heatsink.

The huge X48 northbridge on this mobo runs very hot and even hotter when overclocked, so for someone using aircooling only an all copper heat sink would have most likely allowed them to push the CPU harder with less heat but the mostly alloy copper look alike heat sink is not so great  even with the little fan ASUS provide with the mobo.

ASUS have had a few black marks against there name for varrious things like EPU issue, so this is just another.

The old saying "Let the buyer beware!" stands very true here!

Anyway ive had my biarch.