WEBVTT

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buy a qualifying Intel product and get entered in the Intel Dynamic ticket

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giveaway for a chance to win great prizes visit Intel gaming promo.com to

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learn more welcome to my unboxing of the Maximus 6 formula from ASUS this is

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probably out of all the Z87 boards the

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one that I can really look at and go yes there is a very compelling value here

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for this high-end board because it includes things that I personally

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believe in very strongly and that is a nice high-end Intel Nix solution with

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prioritization with that said that's included on a lot of the other ASUS

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boards but where it really gets real for me so to speak on their formula grade

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boards is the onboard audio solution so

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here they have a bunch of stuff that may or may not mean anything to you so Ela

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premium audio capacitors audio capacitors are not necessarily the same

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as regular capacitors you can have a great capacitor that's not not

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necessarily fantastic for audio applications all right so they've also

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got what else what else do they have to say about themselves here Supreme effect shielding Emi Protection cover okay

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differential design with premium opamps premium op amps is definitely important

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here wima film capacitors WEA rather

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sorry cus logic CS 4398 DAC and they

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also have a TPA 612 A2 600 ohm high-fi

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headphone amp so ASUS's whole thing with their onboard audio Solutions is that

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it's more than the sum of the parts now they do list out all the parts for you

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spec heads that really want to know what's in there but what they're trying

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to do and they're using a lot of the experience that they get from their Zonar cards is they're trying to deliver

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a balanced configuration right out of the box now there are competitors that

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are offering features such as swappable opamps on their onboard Solutions but it

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should be noted that per a thread on the audio section of the Linus Tech tips

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Forum swappable opamps isn't necessarily a good thing you shouldn't NE

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necessarily even want to swap out your op amps because the rest of the system

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was designed around the one that it was designed to run with and it's kind of

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like you could put you know a th000

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horsepower engine in a Volkswagen Beetle but you probably shouldn't because it

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will likely tear the axles off if you actually tried to go anywhere in it um

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so it's it's it's that kind of thing and it's less extreme than that but I think

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you guys get my point in terms of accessories we've got a full kit not

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quite as Extreme as the Maximus 6 Extreme which makes a lot of sense

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there's a manual with some useless discs inside although you got a sweet looking

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Rog sticker in there so don't throw that away while you're throwing away the disc

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an SLI Bridge with their awesome Republic of Gamers branding flexible

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black perfect SLI Bridge good job ASUS Q connectors a door hanger enter Champion

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to break and do not disturb champion in

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action I think they got a bit of a champion to break I think they meant on

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break but whatever uh we've got an antenna for the builtin wireless AC as

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well as their combo card that I personally really like so it includes

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both Wireless and an ngff slot so that

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you can install a uh mini SSD that'll

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that'll actually interface with PCI Express rather than with a SATA

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interface like you would on MSA because on a desktop let's face it what is the

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point of installing an NSA SSD it doesn't perform any better it's just you

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have lots of room uh all right next up we've got the io Shield as well as eight

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serial ata3 cables four of which are right angle four of which are straight

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and those little handy Rog labels for your SATA CA so you don't lose track of

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what's going where and why and how as you guys may or may not have noticed

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this is one sexy motherboard both b-roll

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and I are in agreement that out of everything we've looked at so far this

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is got to be the best looking motherboard we've encountered they've even done a few things that I think are

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just just exceptional so so I want to point those out right off the bat so

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number one is their Rog armor so there

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is a top plate as well as a back plate

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now the back plate is actually the one I'm a little bit more interested in

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because it is metal and it has some

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definite functionality so number one is it increases the rigidity of the board

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overall so if you were to over torque any screws such as on when you're

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installing your CPU heat sink the board is less likely to Bow and flex and the

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other thing about it is that the name armor is appropriate because it is not

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that uncommon for people to accidentally install an extra um you know standoff in

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the back of their motherboard tray or anything like that that can actually

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ruin your board and cut traces on the back of your board if you don't realize

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it in time this will actually prevent that from happening in most cases

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because it will just hit the armor so there you go that's really cool on the

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front it's a plastic shroud and uh ASUS themselves uh admitted to me that it's

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more for Aesthetics than anything else else with that said it does a fantastic

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job of what it's trying to do which is improve the Aesthetics of the board this

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one is plastic they've also said that while they have observed a slight

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temperature improvements particularly in certain areas like around the PCI

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Express slots where a lot of the time those graphics cards are going to be

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kicking off more heat than the motherboard itself so it actually serves

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to Shield the motherboard from the heat of other components more than help the

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motherboard cool itself in that case um but other than that it it doesn't really

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do too much in terms of cooling on this particular motherboard's implementation

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next up is their cross chill now I really like the way that they've used

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these stylized rubber plugs here as opposed to just having the Barb stick

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out on the last generation board and then having little rubber plugs that are easy to get lost so this allows you to

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run the board either completely passively with u you know supplemental

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air cooling with something like an antech spot cool or by putting your own

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G1 quarter fittings on here and integrating it into your custom loop

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with that said um unless you're running an anti-corrosive additive such as

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ethylene glycol I probably wouldn't recommend running this particular thing

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in your Loop because it does have aluminum internals as opposed to Copper

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internals and depending on who you ask of course aluminum can be fine in this

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or that case and it's probably going to be okay and it probably will but I've

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seen enough problems with corrosion eating away at aluminum components

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inside water cooling Loops that it is not something that I would personally

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feel comfortable using unless I had a good anti-corrosive additive so if you

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use something like swifttech hydrix then you're going to be golden now let's

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start with the overall tour of the board up here in the top we find that ngff

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mpcie combo 2 Port where we can put our wireless module as well as an ngff or M2

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SSD we've got a fan header a four pin

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and 8 Pin power connector so while it's not the Maximus 6 Extreme which includes

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their OC panel it's OC panel compatible and it's certainly extreme overclocking

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compatible I mean not again not necessarily quite to the same extent as

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the Maximus 6 Extreme although it does support some cool stuff including their

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GPU hot wire which allows you to overvolt ASUS gpus that support the

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feature on this particular board it has their M button which allows you to

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diagnose post errors that are caused by memory not really working correctly V

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checkpoints as well as an onboard post readout start and reset switches built

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in there's something I wanted to draw your attention to it's over here I was

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looking for it that's their patent pending four pin three pin and detecting

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CPU uh fan connector so it'll actually automatically configure your fan control

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which of course it has their latest fan control software which you can access

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through uh fan expert fan expert 2 I believe is the iteration which you

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can access through AI Suite allowing you to have full control of every fan that

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is plugged into the board but anyway this one will detect on its own with no

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intervention from the user four dual Channel DDR3 ports as well as an LGA

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1150 socket support reporting the latest Haswell fourth generation Intel

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processors the of course as you'll find on any Rog board the vrm is as pretty

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much as highend as ASUS can build so this is their Digi plus gen 3 Extreme

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Engine so you can configure anything you'd want from within the BIOS to very

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very to a very minute degree of accuracy

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um down the right hand Edge we find the 24 pin exactly where it belongs would

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have liked to see that front USB 3 connector on our right angle that's one

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thing where I think this board could still be improved we've got six SATA 3 6

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GB per second ports running off the Intel chipset and four SATA 3 6 GB per

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second ports running off of an additional chipset this is a feature

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that's a carryover from the extreme board so it actually supports fast boot

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on or off when you're particularly under subzero temperatures you might not

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necessarily want it to boot up as quickly so you can actually turn fast

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boot off all right we've got our front panel connectors as well as our front

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panel uh USB 2 header only a single single USB 2 header on this board that's

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very interesting there's that proprietary connector for the OC panel

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the Thunderbolt header to add Thunderbolt support to the board with an

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optional accessory trusted platform module auxiliary power for multiple

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graphics cards although it should be noted that this board only supports

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two-way SLI or up to three-way Crossfire

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so that'll be running in 16x mode for a single card 8X 8X for dual cards or 8X

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4X forx for triple cards and NVIDIA

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doesn't support SLI operation on PCIe forx slots this is something that's kind

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of cool check this out you guys so ASUS has actually left open-ended PCI Express

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slots on all the PCI e1x slots so if you were to remove the thermal armor which

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you can you would be able to install longer cards without any modding which I

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think is pretty handy so anyway if you wanted to install more than two graphics cards I would recommend using the easy

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plug right here we've got our front panel audio connector and it's ideal

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location on the bottom left of the board as well as that red line audio

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separation for the completely separate PCB so it's completely separate from the

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rest of the PCB it's as isolated as their old Supreme effects

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implementations where they had a separate PCIe Riser card except that

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it's built into the motherboard itself so talking to uh talking to JJ from ASUS

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he said one of the tough questions that he always gets is well what is a great

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onboard audio solution equivalent to in terms of an add-in card and he was

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saying if you go to like a a lesser board such as the Maximus 6 hero for

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example uh you're getting what's probably equivalent to something like a

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Zonar DG or dgx so about a $35 audio

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solution with this you're probably getting something that's a little bit

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closer to a Zonar DX or about an $80 audio solution which from my experience

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is going to be enough for most people who don't have like a golden audio file

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ear and you're of course going to get things like their uh their onscreen

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radar uh heads up display that shows you where the audio sounds are coming from I

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actually asked JJ about this as well I was like has that been banned yet from

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tournament play he's like uh I'm sure

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that no tournament's going to allow you to use it but apparently it hasn't been formally banned yet it's meant more for

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I think the casuals playing at home than uh for for tournament play um definitely

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all right so we uh we've got eight four pin fan connectors one two three four uh

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five six s eight and actually they're

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very very well laid out so that you're going to be able to plug in kind of some

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you know top fans such as in something like a Corsair 800d you got a couple

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rear fans you got your CPU fan header and then you'll be able to plug in

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something at the front of the case and or the bottom so very thoughtful layout

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on that particular aspect of this board I think that's getting pretty close to

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the end here so let's move around to the back where we've got Rog connect ah yes

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the Rog connect button even though the cable's not included it does still

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feature that functionality so you can hook it up to an external computer or laptop to control all of your over

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overclocking settings at a hardware level so the cable you'll have to get on

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your own but the functionality is still there BIOS Flashback 4 USB 2.0 ports six

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USB 3.0 ports DisplayPort HDMI optical

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audio out gigabit land provided by Intel

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as well as 7.1 audio out oh it should be

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noted that's a 127v Intel gigabit Lan chip that is

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powering that right there thank you for checking out my unboxing and overview of

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the Maximus 6 formula from isus don't forget subscribe to L Tech tips for more

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dislike it if you disliked it and leave me a comment if you'd like me to read it

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because I do genuinely read the comments except yours not

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yours N I

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do