It's powered by the A88X chipset and has three PCI Express 3.0 slots

Jun 3, 2014 09:36 GMT  ·  By

The Republic of Gamers product collection from ASUS always balloons whenever an IT trade show happens, and this week is no different, not with Computex 2014 taking place in Taipei, Taiwan.

Indeed, we've already checked out a pretty impressive monitor, the ASUS ROG Swift PG278Q, with 144Hz refresh rate and 1440p resolution.

There are a bunch of other things on display, though, especially motherboards, and it seems that the FM2+ socket from AMD is finally gaining admittance.

You see, until now, there were no socket FM2+ mainboards in the ROG portfolio, despite how extensive the product line is. And despite the fact that the Fm2+ socket has basically been replacing the FM2 for a while.

Now, though, if you're an AMD loyalist, or just prefer AMD's APUs over Intel's chips for whatever other reason, you won't be left out.

Not that the ROG Crossblade Ranger motherboard is all that unique compared to every other gaming FM2+ mainboards out there. Or any that will debut later.

Still, if nothing else, it's a brownie point on AMD's chart. ASUS's ROG series is, after all, supposed to be composed of “the best of the best,” so this product release can be taken as an endorsement.

Especially since the price of the mainboard is actually pretty low in the grand scheme of things, or will be once sales begin, whenever that's supposed to happen: $150 / €150.

The ASUS Republic of Gamers Crossblade Ranger mainboard is driven by the AMD A88X FCH chipset and boasts two PCI Express 3.0 x16 slots (gen 3.0 x8/x8 when both are in use by video boards), and a third PCI Express 3.0 slot x16 wired electrical x4.

Both SLI and CrossFire multi-GPU technologies, from NVIDIA and AMD (respectively) are supported, as you may have surmised.

Four DIMM slots will allow the installation of a fair bit of DDR3 memory, while eight SATA 6.0 Gbps ports will cover the storage side of things.

Intel-made Gigabit Ethernet with ASUS LANGuard, and SupremeFX audio technologies are part of the feature set as well.

Finally, the CPU socket on the ASUS ROG Crossblade Ranger motherboard receives power via an 8-phase VRM (voltage regulation module).

It's possible that the newcomer may already be listed on the website of some retailer or other, but it might take some days or weeks for availability to ramp up too. You'll have to check out the sales channels available to you if you intend to start building a PC immediately.