Conclusion

Frankly speaking, success of our today’s hero - Asus Rampage II Gene – pleases us more than it normally would. And it is not just about the board itself, but about the great work the entire Asus mainboard division has done on this product. While competitors step by step improved the consumer qualities of their products, Asus was in a sort of holding pattern. They did release a lot of mainboards, but there was barely anything new in terms of quality. Among the definite innovations, I can only recall the increase in the number of BIOS settings profiles that the user could save (8 instead of 2) and the ability to assign these profiles unique names. We could also mention the ability to read BIOS images from the NTFS partitions. And that was about it. Things had even gone so far that some experts predicted off the record that Asus would soon wrap up their massive mainboard business and focus on other market segments. We hope that these forecasts are not true and the new functions introduced in Asus Rampage II Gene mainboard are the so long-awaited improvement of the situation – all these are clear indications that Asus mainboard division is working real hard to soon please us with more great new solutions.

As for the actual Asus Rampage II Gene mainboard discussed today, it turned out an extreme success. Pretty good accessories bundle, smart and convenient layout despite small size, excellent BIOS functionality, superb CPU and memory overclocking potential – all these things command respect and change the way we take this small microATX mainboard. There are a few drawbacks, but they are insignificant and can be easily eliminated. And don’t be misled by the “kid’s” size of the Asus Rampage II Gene mainboard: it is a fully-functional solution that will give a head start to many competitors out there. The only restriction we uncovered is the higher power consumption in nominal mode. If you are not planning to overclock your CPU, then maybe you should consider a more energy-efficient mainboard. In all other vases, Asus Rampage II Gene will never disappoint you.