Introduction

Word of a ROG X79 board was almost nonexistent 'till the other day when we saw someone release a photo of the Rampage IV Extreme. It was at that point we knew that the new X79 chipset was going to be getting the beloved ROG treatment. We had such a small photo to go of, though, until today.

Today we're able to show you what's going on with a bunch of boards from ASUS. We've already looked at the mainstream Pro and Deluxe model, but the board the enthusiasts want to know about is the Rampage IV Extreme.

The NDA as usual is pretty strict from Intel and co. but we're allowed to show you some stuff in our typical preview format. That means we'll be checking out the box, before we dive in deeper looking at the motherboard itself. Once we've done a good look around the motherboard, we'll wrap everything up. But first, let's check out the package.

ASUS Rampage IV Extreme Package

Looking at the front of the box, it's very typical ROG. We've got that dark red color scheme going on, the ROG label, ASUS one and of course the model number in the middle which is the Rampage IV Extreme.

In typical ROG fashion, we can see the box opens up. On the left we've got a really good in depth look at some of the overclocking features that make the board stand out when compared to the competition. On the left we've got our first glimpse of the board which we'll be looking at more soon.

Turning the box over, we get a few more details on some of the features along with the specification table and a look at what the I/O ports hold. We'll take a closer look at that soon as we move into the motherboard.

While we haven't been able to really show what's going on with the package in our other boards, we can say one thing that's included in the package of the Rampage IV Extreme - The new ROG OC key.

We don't know a lot about this at the moment, as we haven't gotten a chance to use it. What we do know is that it sits between your VGA card and monitor and offers an overlay. What information is in that overlay again isn't known. I'm not too sure, but I'm assuming one of the benefits is that the solution doesn't use any resources and thanks to that, it can be used to follow certain areas while trying to break records. No doubt we'll read about it more soon enough.