If you haven’t heard about ASUS by now, let me fill you in on the most important details. They’re good at developing motherboards. Always have been. And in the past few years the company has made it a tradition to release boards under the “republic of gamers” brand. These are meant to be top notch gaming enthusiasts motherboards that provide everything a mad overclocker could desire.

So when the time came to launch the new line of socket 1366 motherboards for the Intel Core i7 CPU, there was no doubt ASUS would enchant enthusiasts with another “republic of gamers” motherboard. This is how the Rampage II Extreme was born. A board with the most advanced technology the company has, powered by the Intel X58 chipset.

Besides the X58 feature specs, there are plenty of ASUS proprietary technologies integrated on the Rampage II Extreme. For overclocking headroom the company is using a dynamic multi-phase power system called Extreme Engine with ML Cap Design. It uses multilayered capacitors to ensure stable power supply in case of over voltages. This provides gamers with the ultimate overclocking advantage, allowing them to gain the higher edge against their opponents.

The BIOS Flashback feature allows users to save two different versions of BIOS settings. So you can have a profile for gaming (with overclocking at its max) and an entertainment BIOS for watching movies and listening to music.

CPU Level Up is like a software CPU upgrade. It actually uses an instant overclocking feature to raise the performance of your CPU. Users are shown their current CPU and offered a list of possible CPU upgrades. They just have to select a better performing CPU and the software does the overclocking for them.

The motherboard comes with an external LCD poster designed to display POST information if there are any problems at system startup. So, if any of the components fail, the user will know exactly which one to replace.

As gamers usually take proud in their rigs, ASUS have outfitted the Rampage II Extreme with EL I/O. This feature illuminates the back connectors of your PC so you can see where to connect your peripherals in the dark, and also provides a cool look.