ASUS Intel X79 Motherboards – P9X79, TUF, WS and ROG Rampage IV Extreme

ASUS X79 Sabertooth and Rampage IV Extreme

Next up we have the ASUS Sabertooth X79 which is part of the TUF Motherboard series by ASUS. You’ll notice that this board doesn’t use the ‘Tactical Vest’ like we saw on the Sabertooth P67 as we were told it didn’t really do much to remove hot air from the board components.

The new board features an optional fan and some plastic molding around the rear I/O panel to help direct hot air away from some of the boards components. The board features twelve embedded smart real-time temperature reading sensors that detect heat levels across the board. This allows the BIOS to adjust the fan speed as needed to prevent overheating.

This board will feature a five year warranty and is built to last. We
were told by ASUS that the X79 Sabertooth is codenamed ‘TANK’ internally
due to how well this board is built.

Here we have a quick look at the very first ASUS motherboard that
supports Intel Sandy Bridge-E processors that is part of the Republic of Gamers
series, the Rampage IV Extreme. This motherboard is an ROG product and
is clearly aimed at enthusiasts and overclockers.

Just below the eight DDR3 quad-channel memory slots you can see the board
has on-board power and reset buttons. To the left of those you can see
four switches that are on the board to enable/disable the PCIe x16
slots on the RIVE. Just below those you’ll find eight voltage check
points along the edge of the motherboard. These are monitoring CPU,
DRAM, PCH voltages among others. The board also has a switch called ‘LN2
Mode’ and this is for very extreme users who want to use liquid
nitrogen cooling.

This board has eight SATA ports. The four black ones are SATA II and the
other four red ones are SATA III, the four black ones are all SATA II
and run of the X79 chipset. Two of the two red ones run off an ASMedia
ASM1061 controller.The bit black square to the right is something ASUS
calls ‘Subzero Sense’ on the RIVE that allows you find out temperatures
in the ranges of -200C to +200C with the use of a fluke.

We won’t dive into too many more details, but you can see how this is the ultimate enthusiast platform from ASUS for the Intel X79 platform.

ASUS is also working on some work station boards that are looking mighty impressive, but we’ll save that for another day.