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ASUS ROG Maximus VI Formula Motherboard Review

Motherboards/Intel S1150 by leeghoofd @ 2013-11-04

ASUS delayed the release of the Maximus VI Formula till after Computex 2013. We got a glimpse of the board at the ASUS booth and it looked at first glance like a TUF/ROG hybrid. The ROG series are renown as high end motherboards, stunning looks and high performance; however not engineered solely for gamers, but the enthusiast and extreme overclockers get their sweets too. Usually the ROG series had 3 members: the mATX Gene, the midrange Formula and the flagship, the Extreme board. With the Z87 series, ASUS throws an entry level priced ROG in the mix with the Maximus VI Hero board and even a mITX board, the Impact. The Hero is comparable as being the vanilla board of the Republic of Gamers line up. The small mATX Gene VI gives those with small cases the option to install a top class motherboard; the Formula for those that seek a full ATX board packed with features, yet still at an affordable price level. The flagship Extreme board is the most expensive and targeted at those that want either the best of the best or the ultimate board that can push the envelope, no matter the cooling method used.

A Closer Look Part I

The ASUS Maximus VI Formula sports an 8-phase black wing choke power design, more then plenty for Intel's Haswell generation as they each can deliver up to 60A per choke. The insane phase amounts of some other boards are more a marketing gimmick, than anything else. The board's premium power components delivers more than plenty of amps and stable voltages, no matter if you are running your CPU overclocked with a beefy air cooler or under extreme cooling conditions.

In the CPU socket we find a small hole that allows die-hard overclockers to install a temp probe. A dual CPU power plug at the top of the PCB, consisting of an 8 pin and an extra 4 pin version for extra stability under extreme loads. A high end motherboard ready for some serious pounding requires a LED debug LED and voltage measurement points.

The 4 DIMM dual channel slots are 3000MHz+ OC certified and powered by a dual phase design. A whopping total of 32GB is supported, more than plenty don't you think ? The Q-LED feature next to the 24 pin Power connector also allows easy debugging. This in combination with the Post Code LED, makes finding the culprit of a non boot pretty easily detectable.

The PCIe slot layout is well defined, with two nicely spaced upper PCIe 3.0 X16 slots. SLI is supported or a triple card Crossfire. If one GPU is used it will run at x16 speeds, two cards will run at x8/x8 and in case of using AMD cards the first two will be set at x8 and the 3rd card at x4 speeds. Three PCIe 2.0 x1 slots foreseen for other add on cards. A 4 pin Molex plus allows more stable voltages, whenever using a power hungry graphic card setup.

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