ASUS Rampage III Extreme Motherboard

On-Board Peripherals (Cont’d)

In Figure 5, you can see the motherboard rear panel with keyboard PS/2 connector, seven USB 2.0 ports (black ones), clear CMOS button, two USB 3.0 ports (blue ones), optical SPDIF output, FireWire port, eSATA-300 port (green one), one Gigabit Ethernet port, ROG Connect button and independent analog 7.1 audio outputs.

Figure 5: Motherboard rear panel.

No mouse PS/2 connector is available, thus you have to use a USB mouse with this motherboard.

The ROG Connect feature is quite interesting. It allows you to use the seventh USB 2.0 port from the rear panel (the one near the ROG Connect button) to connect your PC to another computer (a laptop, for example) through a cable that comes with the motherboard for overclocking and diagnosing your computer from the second computer.

Rampage III Extreme also comes with a Bluetooth module, which is installed on the rear panel and can be used for overclocking usign a compatible PDA or mobile phone.

There are several other smaller features targeted to enthusiasts. For example, all the connectors for auxiliary fans support PWM technology in order to automatically control the speed of each fan, and on three of them the motherboard supports the installation of a thermal sensor in order to control the fan speed according to the temperature on where you installed the corresponding thermal sensor.

In Figure 6, you can see all accessories that come with this motherboard. Besides the standard accessories (manual, driver DVD, case backplate, cables), it comes with the SLI and CrossFireX bridges, a sticker, a USB cable for the ROG function, Bluetooth module and an alternative active heatsink for the north bridge chip.

Figure 6: Accessories.