Included Extras
With a board this feature rich, you know you are going to find a TON of included extras in the box along with it.
Here we can see a lot of the ASUS-specific options that the Rampage II Extreme offers including the X-Fi SupremeFX audio riser card, the external LCD POST display and a set of three temperature probes. Since the board supports both standard SLI and 3-Way SLI, one connector for each type is included in the box as is an optional chipset fan, Q-connectors and even a handful of zip ties.
The X-Fi audio that is included on the riser card supports 8-channel analog audio output as well as both coax and optical digital audio outputs as you can see here. This is true, Creative-branded audio hardware here that fully supports EAX versions up to 4.0, the 24-bit crystalizer, etc.
ASUS has included six SATA cables, three of which work at right angles – something that is not really necessary since they have all but one SATA port pointed to the side of the board, a single SATA power adapter, IDE cable, 2xUSB and 1xFirewire dongle and the EL I/O back panel.
Finally, here are the two “ProbeIt” connections with simple directions on how to utilize them for multimeter-based monitoring.
Here are a few more shots of the included LCD POST device at work – it has a blue back light that is really difficult to photograph but isn’t too hard on the eyes. The device works even while the system is powered down (with AC power still running) allowing you to pick which BIOS to boot up BEFORE you start up the system.
While idle the LCD POSTER shows the current BIOS time.
These three shots show me using the toggle switches to hit up the overclocking menu, accessing the Base Clock setting and then having the option to increase the speed right from the device. What is interesting is that if you set the clock rate while the system is off it will attempt to boot with those settings right away.
Finally, here is another shot of the LCD POSTER showing the current voltage setting for the CPU (1.4563v) as it can also be adjusted using the device. There is a lot more to this little add-on that meets the eye.
