ASUS Rampage III Extreme Motherboard

Overclocking Options

Keeping their tradition on the high-end market, ASUS added a myriad of overclocking features on Rampage III Extreme. Let’s first talk about the hardware-based overclocking features present on this product.

ASUS Rampage III Extreme has four LED sets to indicate at which range the voltages from the CPU, north bridge, south bridge and memory are at the moment. They can be in three different colors: green (normal), yellow (high) or red (crazy). On page 2-2 from the manual there are several tables showing the voltage ranges that triggers each color. On the motherboard setup you can configure which voltage each LED will be displaying. For example, you can change the CPU voltage LED to display either the CPU voltage (VCC), the memory controller voltage (VTT) or the CPU embedded clock generator (VCCPLL).

In Figure 8, you can see also the "Go Button", which has two functions: pressed before POST it starts an automatic memory test. If pressed after the operating system is loaded, it executes an overclocking based on a pre-configured profile.

Figure 8: Buttons and points for monitoring voltages.

Another feature seen on this Figure is the presence of four switches marked ON and OFF, which can independently disable each PCI Express x16 slot. So if your computer is not booting and you suspect that the problem is with one specific video card you won’t need to remove it: simply disable the whole slot by moving the corresponding switch.

Rampage III Extreme also has points where you can check the voltages using a multimeter. You just need to put the black probe on the GND spot and the red probe on the point corresponding to the voltage you want to measure. The board also comes with a small adapter that you can connect to one of the white headers close to the points, so you can keep the probes connected permanently to the spot you want to monitor.

Let’s see now the overclocking options present on the motherboard setup.