Asus' Formula Rampage motherboard
X48 goes old-school with DDR2

A testament to its popularity among high-end motherboard buyers (and its ability to produce multiple model variations based on the same basic board foundation), Asus offers no fewer than ten different motherboards based on the X38 Express chipset. The company's X48 Express lineup is already up to three models, with the Rampage Formula potentially the most attractive to enthusiasts because of its support for DDR2 rather than DDR3 memory.

The X48 Express' memory controller is flexible enough to handle either memory type, but most of the boards released to date—including Intel's DX48BT2—have opted to support DDR3, despite the huge price premium it commands over DDR2 modules. If you can afford to drop between $250 and $300 on a high-end motherboard, value probably isn't your primary concern. However, it's hard to ignore the fact that DDR3 modules typically cost three to four times that of comparable DDR2 DIMMs.

Of course, DIMM slots are perhaps the least interesting element of the Rampage Formula. This is a high-end Asus motherboard we're talking about, and as such, it's loaded with all sorts of interesting features and extras. Even with those extra goodies, Asus manages to lay things out intelligently on the board, avoiding major clearance problems while covering the Rampage with close to a metric ton of copper.

Most of that copper can be found around the CPU socket in an ornate array of heatsinks that cover the north bridge chip and voltage regulation circuitry. Some aluminum fins are thrown in for good measure, serving as a mounting point for the board's auxiliary cooling fan. The fan is only recommended if you're overclocking or run a water- or passively-cooled system with little ambient airflow, and we didn't encounter any problems running our board without the fan, even when overclocking.

With so much metal walling in the socket, one might expect the Rampage Formula to sacrifice compatibility with larger aftermarket coolers, but the heatsinks are relatively short, providing just enough clearance for the Scythe Ninja cooler we tried to shoehorn into crowded socket real estate. Installing the Ninja is another matter, though. The Rampage's heatsink array may be a low-profile design, but it can make getting at a cooler's retention tabs a little tricky.

The Rampage's cooler network snakes a heatpipe down to a low-profile heatsink on the ICH9R south bridge. Clearance for gargantuan graphics cards isn't a problem here thanks to Asus' use of edge-mounted IDE and SATA ports. Sideways Serial ATA ports don't always play nicely with extremely tight enclosures that leave little room around the edges of the motherboard, but we're willing to live with the trade-off for the additional graphics card clearance.

Over on the other side of the board, Asus stacks six expansion slots. The top slot is reserved for an audio riser card that we'll detail in a moment, so it doesn't really count toward the total.

Apart from the riser expansion slot, the Rampage features pairs of PCI, PCIe x1, and PCIe x16 slots. These are arranged to ensure that double-wide CrossFire configs will leave users access to at least one PCI slot and PCIe x1 slot. However, expansion cards longer than about six and three-quarters inches won't fit in the top PCI slot due to the proximity of the Rampage's DIMM slots.

Like Intel's Bonetrail board, the Rampage Formula lacks serial and parallel ports. It's also missing a PS/2 mouse port, but retains a PS/2 keyboard port, presumably for those attached to vintage clickety-clack buck spring keyboards that don't have USB interfaces.

External Serial ATA connectivity is missing from the port cluster, which is an odd omission for a high-end motherboard. However, you do get a handy CMOS reset button that's perfect for trial-and-error overclocking. Asus also throws in six USB ports, Firewire, and two flavors of digital S/PDIF audio output.

The rest of the board's audio ports can be found on a SupremeFX II riser card that houses an Analog Devices ADI 1988B codec chip. In theory, the riser card and its shielding should help to isolate the codec and analog outputs from board-level noise that can degrade output quality. We'll have to see if our analog audio signal quality tests bear that out.

Extras are a staple of high-end Asus motherboards, and the Rampage Formula is no exception. The board comes bundled with an auxiliary cooling fan and ingenious little front-panel connector blocks that make enclosure wiring a whole lot easier. More interesting, however, is an external POST code display that takes the beep code deciphering out of troubleshooting boot problems. The LCD display isn't nearly as swanky as the SideShow module Asus has experimented with on some motherboards, but it's a neat little extra. A recessed CMOS reset button, even if it required a pin to activate, would make this external display even better. After all, if you encounter a POST code error, chances are you're going to have to reset the CMOS to fix it.

Asus also bundles some software with the Rampage Formula, and it's something you might actually want: a copy of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl.