Asus's latest motherboard supporting Intel's high-end Core i7 technology is one that will really surprise a lot of people, as the Rampage II Gene is built on a microATX PCB. Yes that's right, here is a small motherboard that people won't be scoffing at, though they might just cough at the 200 quid price tag it carries.

The Rampage II Gene is part of Asus's Republic of Gamers (ROG) product line, which means it is probably the most feature-rich microATX board you might ever come across.

Indeed, it's impressive the amount of features Asus has built into this board without the PCB appearing cluttered. That's not easy when you consider the size of the Socket 1366, six DIMM slots (supporting up to 24GB of DDR3-2000/1800/1600 via overclocking and 1333), two full-speed x16 PCI-E graphics card slots and seven SATA 3Gb/s ports.

The DIMM slots have a novel locking system with latches only on one end, the ends nearest the graphics card slots having no latch to get in the way of any graphics card. This means that these DIMM slots can be placed nearer the x16 PCI-E slots, saving a bit of space. The system works really well, the memory modules being held firmly in place.

Both the X58 Northbridge and the ICH10R Southbridge are passively cooled, as are the MOSFETS, but whereas the Northbridge cooler and MOSFET heatsinks are connected, the Southbridge one sits on its own.

Intel's X58 chipset supports both Crossfire and SLI technologies and sure enough Asus provides two x16 slots for either setup - impressive for such a small board - but the drawback is that if you use two dual-height cards you will lose access to the single x1 PCI-E and standard PCI slots.

Intel's reference specification for the X58 got rid of IDE support which is annoying if you have an ATA interfaced optical drive, but Asus has put back an ATA port on the Rampage II Gene, though its positioning is awkward as it sits in between the 24-pin ATX power connector and one of the memory slots.

Six of the seven SATA ports are mounted on the edge of the board at ninety degrees, which helps with tidy cable runs, and all six are controlled by the RAID-enabled ICH10R Southbridge. The seventh sits just inside these on the board and is controlled by a separate chip.

As this is a Republic of Gamers board you should expect to see some special features and they appear in the form of integrated eight-channel audio courtesy of Creative's SupremeFX X-Fi audio chip; more upmarket than your everyday integrated motherboard audio.

Meanwhile, the bottom edge of the board is home to a large red Start button, and reset and MemOK buttons which will please enthusiasts who use their boards out of a case or don't bother with case side panels. Added to these there is a useful 'clear CMOS' button on the rear I/O panel which saves messing about with fiddly jumpers on the board itself.

Verdict
Asus's Rampage II Gene is the first microATX board we have seen that supports Intel's high-end CPU and associated chipset, and it must be said it's the most feature-rich small board we have seen too. The only thing missing is perhaps an onboard HDMI port which would only add to what is already a pretty imposing price tag.

Company: Asus

Contact: 0871 220 3227

Tags: asus microatx pci express mosfet atx intel corporation serial ata conventional pci