RRP: $499.99 | Website: www.asus.com
ASUS RAMPAGE
IV EXTREME
Black Edition
EDITOR’S CHOICE
AWARD
OC Hero Award
Test Machine
• INTEL Core i7 4960X
• CORSAIR Dominator
Platinum 4x4GB DDR
2666MHZ C10
• EVGA GTX 780 Classified
• Corsair LS 240GB SSD
• Cooler Master Silent Pro M2
1500W
• Windows 7 64-bit SP1
BIOS 0208
T
his may have started about as a
regular review of the Rampage IV
Extreme Black Edition. However,
during the course of this review,
something had changed as it has now
turned into our cover feature. At the
time of planning this issue, there were
so many things we wanted to cover
to end 2013 with, but when the RIVE
Black Edition showed up; well, let’s
just say it put everything else into
perspective. It’s truly amazing what a
single product or component rather
can achieve and how it can shape the
many more things outside the scope of
its use.
We as overlockers, some
12 The OverClocker Issue 27 | 2013
competitive
and others not,
have gone from a
neglected and frowned
upon sub culture, to easily
the most addressable group of
individuals within the computing
space. Every other group is addressed
out of necessity, spoken to as a whole
and largely dictated to a far larger
extent than we are.
With overclockers we may believe
our wishers are not granted, we are
not given a platform to speak and
most importantly, regardless of what
it is we request, it is never met with
our expectations, if it is met at all.
How easily it would be to forget then,
just how far we have traversed this
DIY landscape with vendors. To them,
overclockers have become a painful
necessity. After all, while it is true that
there is space for gaming orientated
motherboards and such. There are
only so many things you can add to a
motherboard or graphics card short
of an actual game that would make
said component gaming centric.
A name alone would not do the trick,
yet here we are, many years later and
several generations of ROG products
to call upon. We find ourselves looking
at what is hopefully
not, but potentially the
greatest ROG motherboard
that will ever be, at least in
the near future. As many of us all
know, it takes an individual familiar
with the community, with the needs
of the community or rather wants, to
produce a board that resonates with
us. It is very easy to see this because
out of the top four or maybe even five
vendors that are in any way concerned
about overclocking, each and
every one of them has employed or
consulted an overclocker somewhere
in their component design. Some have
fared better than others, while others,
not afforded the voice they should
rightfully have, have still managed to
make miracles happen. Others are
there in spirit only, but whichever