ASUS Rampage II Extreme X58 Motherboard Review – Ultimate Enthusiast Platform

With all of those various overclocking options at our disposal, overclocking your new Core i7 processor should be no problem at all on the ASUS Rampage II Extreme motherboard.  Keep in mind though that overclocking with this new architecture is very different than working with the Core 2 or Phenom processors – we detailed all about the various settings and options in our initial processor and chipset review so I highly recommend you read that over before diving head first into your new motherboard’s BIOS. 

While the default clock rate of the Core i7-965 EE is 3.2 GHz I was easily able to hit the 4.0 GHz mark by moving the standard multiplier up to 30x.  Keep in mind of course that you can only increase the multipliers over the standard clock rates if you have an unlocked Extreme Edition CPU – otherwise you’ll be limited to increasing the base clock and utilizing Turbo Mode to its fullest. 

Also like the P6T Deluxe motherboard, the Rampage II Extreme did not allow the system to downclock when idle once we had adjusted the multiplier.  This negates any kind of power consumption benefits that the processor might have.

Again, just as with the ASUS P6T Deluxe, our top overclocking using these simple methods was 4.14 GHz or so – nearly 1000 MHz increase over the default clock speed of 3.2 GHz. 

Overclocking the memory was also a simple experience – simply setting the multiplier control in the BIOS to 12x allowed us to run our Corsair memory at DDR3-1600 speeds without any issues. 

Obviously I am only scratching the surface of what the ASUS Rampage II Extreme can really accomplish when it comes to overclocking Intel’s new Core i7 platform.  With all of the voltage options, frequency adjustments and monitoring controls this board will be very flexible for those users looking to push every last inch of performance.