ASUS Rampage 2 Extreme Motherboard Review

Final Thoughts and Conclusion

The ASUS Rampage 2 Extreme is the most advanced motherboard I have ever tested. Having owned many “enthusiast” motherboards over the years, I was floored with the number of overclocking features and how incredibly stable this board is. At the time this article was written, there have been 10 BIOS revisions since it first launched, so you can see it has taken a bit to get it to where it is today. That should not take away anything from this motherboard but should go to show that ASUS is dedicated to supporting its customers. Priced at $398.99, the R2E is aptly named. This level of tweaking does not come cheaply, so only those very serious about overclocking need apply. Some of the cost is due to the “certification” fee that ASUS has had to pay to NVIDIA in order to validate their motherboard for SLI. The R2E is certified for Dual, Triple, and Quad-SLI. CrossFireX is also supported, and in either triple card configuration you will be running at 16x, 8x, 8x in the three PCIe slots.

The Rampage 2 Extreme is not about bang for the buck; this is for going all out and breaking overclock records, seeing your name at the top of the Futuremark ORB and HWBOT. So all in all, this is a halo product for ASUS. While we all drool over this motherboard, most of us “make do” with a P6T or P6T Deluxe, but remember that many of the things learned from the creation of the R2E go into the more mainstream motherboards. For instance, the non-Deluxe P6T supports Triple-SLI and has the same PCIe layout of the R2E — two things that really separate it from the more expensive P6T Deluxe.

So the target market for this board is extreme overclockers, or anyone looking for a high-end motherboard from ASUS that supports Triple-SLI. For those of you that aren’t into extreme overclocking, this is still a great board. With just the tweak of one setting you can turn an i7 920 to the same clock as the $1000 i7 965 and never have to worry about anything again. With tremendous out of the box performance, you can be sure that you’re getting some of the very best performance that money can buy.

Legit Bottom Line: The ASUS Rampage 2 Extreme is the ultimate enthusiast motherboard with more tweaking options than you can shake a stick at. Providing incredible stability even when pushing the envelope, the R2E is at the top of the heap if you’re looking for the best of the best.