ASUS X299 Rampage VI Extreme Omega Review

Conclusion

It is a testament to the esteem with which ASUS hold their Republic of Gamers arm that they have revisited the Rampage VI Extreme and improved upon something which was already very good indeed. The Rampage VI Extreme original was designed with the possibility of processors having a certain number of cores and being able to be overclocked up to a certain level, thus requiring x amount of power. Naturally if you give the community two minutes they’ll find a way to push the boundaries beyond that which might be considered in advance, and with the Core i9-7980XE and Core i9-9980XE hardcore overclockers could the limits of the Extreme (mainly due to subzero cooling most mere mortals don’t have access too). They never passed them, because the motherboard was already designed with massive headroom, but ASUS weren’t satisfied with anyone getting close to metaphorically brushing their hair upon the ceiling and thus returned to the drawing board and brought out the Rampage VI Extreme Omega.

By bumping up the power phases and applying the same cooling technology to the Voltage Regulator Modules that we saw on the Zenith Alpha, they have ended up producing a new take upon the Rampage VI Extreme, but one which almost guarantees that you’ll never get close to stressing it. For comparison purposes the majority of this review was tested with the Core i9-7900X in place, a ten core CPU that overclocks to a high level, and the Omega managed to extract another 100 MHz ahead of what we’ve normally been able to obtain. Naturally we couldn’t leave it there so we had to take the Omega to the limits with a heavily overclocked 18 core Core i9-7980XE, and even here the Omega not only managed to overclock it to a tremendously high level, but did so without even the tiniest hint of an issue whilst also managing to keep the VRMs well below 70°C.

That has to be the highlight of our time with the Omega. VRM temperatures were a little bit of a thorny issue for motherboard manufacturers as processors quickly evolved far beyond what Intel had expected when they first sent their partners off to design their X299 products and for a brief period of time the CPUs were capable of more than the power phases were able to handle without becoming extremely toasty indeed. With the Omega upgrade to the Rampage VI though this has totally become a non-issue. When even the biggest, baddest processor that you could fit into its socket cannot make it break a sweat then it is safe to say that anything below a Core i9-7980XE also wont be a problem. Having cooling temperatures and more stable power delivery enables higher overclocks, and they in turn give higher performance. Everyone is a winner.

The Rampage is hardly being stressed at all when running easily available cooling on any of the current CPU’s, now you can either think of that as a waste or you can think of that in the terms of possible longevity and easy smooth clean power being delivered to your massively expensive CPU. Its a bit like running cheap or expensive oil in your sports car. Just depends what type of person you are at heart.

The original Rampage VI Extreme was hardly a bad board by any stretch of the imagination full of connectivity options and high end features but the Omega adopts all of the best that ASUS has to offer and adds upgraded AURA Sync RGB lighting and better power phases to the mix to leave us with a motherboard that is deserving of being part of the Republic of Gamers family and guaranteed not to be the limiting factor in any of your overclocking efforts. It’s expensive, sure, but hugely impressive. It’s the motherboard Harrods would sell you. Its the Bugatti of Motherboards. You might not need it, but hell. You know you want it.

  

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