The Tech in Style crew recently had the privilege of visiting the ASUS headquarters in Taipei, Taiwan, and one of the highlights of the trip was being invited to take a peek into the goings-on inside the usually-secretive ROG lab.

Given that we had a flight home to catch that very afternoon, however, we couldn’t dawdle. Thankfully, we managed to catch ROG team lead Kris Huang, whom we posed with the tough task of filling us in on the latest developments in the world of ROG motherboards… in under 20 minutes. He gamely obliged.

A walkthrough of ROG Connect’s key features

The top-end components used on ROG motherboards

Wireless overclocking with RC Bluetooth

Flashing the BIOS with one button push

Hardcore gamers have a great year to look forward to in 2010, thanks to ASUS and a raft of new Republic of Gamers (ROG) components.

Two new ROG Extreme Series motherboards combine cutting-edge specifications with unprecedented overclocking opportunities for speed junkies. The Rampage III Extreme (Intel® X58 chipset) and Crosshair IV Extreme (AMD® 890FX chipset) each offer four PCI-E x16 slots for mind-blowing frame rates with quad-card NVIDIA SLI and ATI CrossFire X set-ups, but both motherboards also make it easier than ever to squeeze more performance out of more mainstream rigs.

With the flick of a switch, ASUS ROG Connect repurposes a USB port on each Extreme Series motherboard to enable remote access to overclocking features from a second PC. The proprietary iROG processor allows real-time status monitoring on a laptop via a USB connection and the RC TweakIt applications provides a simple way to adjust overclocking parameters on-the-fly.

ROG Connect also provides a straightforward recovery system for over-enthusiastic overclockers and the RC BIOS Flashback feature lets you re-flash the BIOS from a backup using a second computer. RC Remote also provides remote reset, shutdown and CMOS clearing over a USB connection for fool-proof fine-tuning.

Overclockers looking for the ultimate in remote control need look further than ROG Connect’s RC Bluetooth feature. With software installed on a compatible smartphone, overclocking adjustments can be made wirelessly over a Bluetooth connection — just the thing for hectic LAN parties where trailing cables are the very last thing you need.