Conclusion
With the Black Edition motherboards, Asus’ direction is pretty clear. This is not just any run of the mill enthusiast board, but one of the highest end that you can buy (barring the Extreme11 by AsRock), so Asus clearly targets a niche crowd who are either looking at an upgrade from their existing X79 platform, even present RIVE users – or are looking to build a system coming from older chipsets. The SupremeFX Black audio, the OC Panel, the added tweaks in the BIOS, and a newer suite of software all push the already huge feature set of the RIVE even further into RIVBE. Asus are confident to take this stride – RIVE remains their best sold X79 board ever, so they expect RIVBE to follow suit.
With the price out of the way, RIVBE is a great board to work with. I never faced any issues with it whatsoever, and with the hardware I had at hand it worked flawlessly from day one. The board is filled to grill with features, and while I do believe a single user might not be able to use all the nooks and crannies of what the BIOS/UEFI offers, they are there, should anyone need it. I’ll be frank – I never had a liking for the AI Suite, but the latest iteration looks and works much better. Then there are cFosSpeed (GameFirst II), ROG RamDisk, SSD Secure Erase and other features. The SupremeFX Black audio works well out of the box and the OC Panel almost alleviates the need to have a standalone fan controller/system display (I’m reluctant to say it can replace the UEFI based overclocking, but for simple multiplier based OC, it works fine).
With a week that I’ve spent this board with, my inner enthusiast has fallen in love with how good this board is and how easy it is to get it up and running and have a stable OC. In most of the benchmarks, the RIVBE managed to edge past the RIVE in stock settings, and while my 3930K didn’t quite reach the same levels of OC compared to my trusty ol’ RIVE, 4.9 GHz stable was no mean feat. I crossed 5 GHz too, albeit without it being bench stable. A re-testing with 4930K/4960X might prove otherwise. That remains a topic for a review redux.
So in a nutshell, Asus Rampage IV Black Edition is a board for the enthusiast who doesn’t shy away from the fact that to get premium features, you need to pay a premium. You may not need this many features in a board, but then RIVBE is not for everyone, just like Lamborghini or Ferrari isn’t for everyone.
