So today we're going to be having a quick look at the Maximus 3 Gene this is
part of ausa's Republic of Gamers line of motherboard so it includes cool
features like Rog connect plug and overclock tweak it the hardcore way
whatever that means uh me perfect which is optimizing your memory without
lifting a finger actually I've never heard of either of these but what are you going to do memo K this one I know
this is the button that you press to make sure that you run any memory at
bone stock settings at kind of a safe setting to make sure that you can post
and then after you post you can tweak the memory afterwards okay you've got
supreme FX X5 built in so it includes
all of those high-end features but what we haven't shown you is that this is a
microatx motherboard so this is part of their LGA 1156 line of motherboard so it
supports core i7 and core i5 it also supports core I3 although I can't
imagine buying a really expensive board like this and putting a core I3 on it it
does support SLI and Crossfire so if you're doing like a small Extreme Gaming
rig like in a go or another small form factor case this would be a perfect
motherboard for it it's Windows 7 ready and we'll flip it around to the back
where it says basically the same thing as it said on the inside so why don't we
get this box opened up and have a look so the first thing we find inside is the
motherboard bam just like that like all of their Republic of gamer boards it has
a very very cool catchy color scheme but we're going to actually take it away
from you haha and look at the accessories first so we have a USB cable
okay thank you for that just your standard a TOA cable uh there's got to
be something in here it plugs into there's no reason for that SLI Bridge
remember if you need a crossfire Bridge it should come with your video card okay
then you've got some zip ties for cable management you've got the users guide as
well as the oh okay this is interesting so you've got a users guide You've Got A
drivers and installation DVD as well as a republic of Gamers sticker don't use
this DVD download the latest off ASUS.com all right and then this is neat
so they've included little stickers for labeling your hard drives so uh and
colorcoded too so that way you don't have to when you've routed all of your
cables through the case you don't have to fuss around with which one connects
to which drive so you can make a little label like oh this is my 750 gig and
this is my 500 gig and this is my SSD very cool and then your users's guide is
all English and very thick so I'm not even going to try to go through that all
right then we have a huge Republic of Gamers sticker that goes all the way
over to the to the other side here and it's kind of come off a little bit uh
hopefully we can get that off without damaging it too much okay there you go
so that's I guess for your case window all right very nice then you have your
IO Shield which is their black premium looking IO shield with the uh kind of
poofy shiny stuff on the back then we have six SATA cables three of which are
right angle and three of which are straight and then we have our Cube
connector okay so I don't actually see what that USB cable is for but I guess
we'll get to that later so here's the Maximus 2 Gene like all p-55
motherboards and I hope I mentioned it's p-55 you do have support for an LGA 1156
socket and you do have support for dual Channel DDR3 memory and you should use
the color-coded slots this board does have a s's unique feature where this
side of the memory mod slot is not a clip only the other side is an actual
clip so what you do is you slide the memory in this side with the clip open
push it down and clip it shut with just one side it's in theory makes installing
memory a little bit easier your power connectors are in their ideal locations
at the top left corner of the board where you have an 8 Pin power and then
over on the right hand edge of the board where you have your 24 pin power one
thing that I really like that ASUS is doing with their Republic of gamer
boards is they're starting to include way more four pin fan connectors so if
you look at this board we've got one 2 3
four five four pin power connectors so
that means you can pwm control all the fans in your case without any additional
hassle we've got two PCI Express 16x slots that will run at 8X 8X if you're
running in crossfire one PCI Express 4X
and one PCI slot for expansion you've got kind of a little uh cover here on
the chipset that looks pretty neat it's got like a mesh here so it gets a little
bit of ventilation and then you've got your onboard start and reset buttons you
got the premium ones that look kind of like cool then you've got two I was
going to say two but I guess it's three USB spe headers and here is a plug for
the OC station which I believe is available separately it doesn't actually
come with it here's your onboard Supreme xfi FX and let me see if I'm missing
anything here oh yeah yeah yeah um over on this side okay so you've got six SATA
cables running off the chipset and one additional one here running off a third
party chipset here is your Go Button I
think that's the memo button actually I hope it is anyway all right so let's go
around to the back and we'll find out why we have like a random lone SATA port
here and I'm assume it's because yes
there's e SATA on the back of the board so that's where the other SATA port from
that controller is you've got a PS2 keyboard Port then you've got 1 2 3 4
eight USB 2.0 ports as well as another
USB port here which I guess is what that cable was for it must do something
specific something to do with this I think it's their little overclocking
thing okay and then you've got a seos clear switch I love this this is great
means you don't have to fish around in your case especially because it's a
microw TX board that's going to be a real hassle so you can just press this
to clear the seos digital audio is provided by
Optical only then you've got fire wire isata gigabit Ethernet and 7.1 audio
those look like goldplated connectors too so thank you for checking out my
unboxing of the Maximus 3 genan