will be one worth owning. It is nothing
short of a crowning achievement for a
platform that went from frustrating to
outright challenging and dare we say
loads of fun. This is assuming though
you’re on a semi functional board.
As we’ve stated time and time again,
X79 motherboards have been by and
large less than adequate and most
time atrocious, with the exception of a
few, mainly this board’s predecessor
or lesser version (one could not have
imagine describing the RIVE as a
“lesser” version of anything) and far
more recently the X79 Dark (with the
most modern BIOS versions).
So just how much better is this
board than every other board and
perhaps even over and above the
RIVE? Well, consider the following.
While every motherboard vendor
was celebrating memory frequency
records, on the Z87 platform, this
motherboard was the only board
to claim such a record on what just
has to be the incorrect platform.
The incredible speeds were not only
impressive, but consider the following
as well if you will. The said 4GHz
clock was achieved with all channels
populated. That is with four sticks
of memory in quad channel. To this
record, to this feat there was not a
single rebuttal from any other vendor
producing any other board. The quiet
that followed this achievement was
and remains unprecedented. At a time
where every MHz gained in memory
frequency warranted a press release,
this one achievement is so far ahead
of anything else for the chipset that we
heard, read and saw nothing close to
it. We didn’t even record any attempts.
Not to take anything away from the
Maximus VI Impact, which holds the
r ecord, but again there’s no need for
us to spell out the common factor
between these two achievements.
This kind of dominance is ever more
pronounced than when the original
Rampage IV Extreme showed up two
years ago.
So what then would it be that we
would single out as the throw down
argument for why this has to be the
definitive X79 motherboard, perhaps
the quintessential overclocking
motherboard or all? Well, the answer
there is very complicated. You’d have
to literarily go on for pages to list all
these reasons, however, much like
we said before with the MAXIMUS VI
Extreme, and others. It’s the simplicity
in which overclocking takes place with
the Rampage IV Extreme Black Edition
that is mind boggling. No matter your
experience level, not only are you
14 The OverClocker Issue 27 | 2013
educated in overclocking the said
platform by using this board, it helps
you at every turn gain the maximum
overclocks and efficiency possible.
Unlike any other competing board, it
is not taking pot shots in the dark. The
RIVE Black Edition is predictable, it is
consistent and best of all, its results
are repeatable time and time again.
In our own testing, it would be
untrue to say that we spent no less
than a full 24 hours straight optimizing
a single set of memory for operation
on this board. This was not because
we had any difficulties running the
set at spec and far beyond, no. It was
simply an exercise that allowed us
to marvel at just how far one could
take a single set of memory on the
X79 platform while making it useable
without resorting to LN2 for example.
Not only did the RIVE Black Edition,
match all our previous attempts on
other Z87 boards, but we were able
to do with all four sticks of memory
installed. When we needed 3,000MHz
from a quad channel 2,666 C10 set,
the RIVE Black Edition rose to the
challenge and instantly delivered the
results via a profile from which we
then tuned for efficiency.
Many may frown upon the use of
said profiles and would rather seek
out the correct or ideal settings
themselves through an arduous
process of trial and error. However,
we do believe that that the joy of
overclocking is not in its difficulty but
in traversing the road to your desired
milestone the simplest and more
efficient way possible. Moreover, the
truth is not many of us will be able
to optimize memory the same way
that Shamino could. It will always
be laudable to try, but the reality is
that many of us do not have it in us
to tune memory to that degree with
that level of understanding. Thus,
it is best to use the profiles spring
board if possible and go forth from
there. There aren’t many starts that
will be better than those provided
within the BIOS.
There are an insane number of
features that we could go into but
that would be pointless. It’s best to
think of the RIVE Black Edition as the
original board, with even more to