welcome to my unboxing and first look at the Seuss Rog series Maximus 5 formula
this is the thunder FX version and there'll be more on what makes it thunder FX but there is a plain formula
version as well it includes a Diablo 3 mouse pad that's kind of cool support
for Intel core I3 i5 and i7 processors from their third generation line of CPUs
Intel z77 chipset means you get all those usual features including uh SRT
for SSD caching as well as virtue MVP for accelerating your GPU experience and
allowing you to use your integrated graphics for video transcoding in your dedicated graphics for gaming supports
two-way SLI or quad SLI with two dual GPU cards and up to three-way Crossfire
X or quad Crossfire x with two dual GPU
cards here are some highlight features including Fusion thermal completely
redesigned thermal design uh thermal dissipation design for the vrm Supreme
FX4 which has some really cool new Innovations we'll talk more about those later
Thunder FX is included on this version and we'll definitely uh talk about that
more later and Diablo 3 mouse pad also included let's go ahead and get this bad
boy opened up so some more features we'll talk about those as we get it
opened up comes with the Diablo 3 mouse pad which is here and you can get
the know how to get that out oh here at the top there's an envelope Sticky Thing
all right this is the thunder FX so the Thunder
FX this yeah this is the kind of thing
that is a tremendous value ad for a board like this so yes you're spending a
bunch of money on a board but if you're a frequent upgrader sometimes you can
get well I hate to say burned a little bit but you can get burned a little bit
on spending a ton of money on these premium boards only to find out that
there's nothing you can really carry forward with you in the future well the
Thunder FX is something that you will be able to so this is okay what do they
have to say for themselves versatile gaming audio for PC and consoles right
is compatible with any device tablet phone PC console doesn't matter it it is
capable of driving up to 300 ohm
resistance uh headphones and uses premium capacitors for Pure powerful
audio Supreme sound accessory that your console landan or entertainment
enjoyment requires so let's have a look at what they've got in terms of spec
they're using a cdia 6631 audio processor they're using as I recall I
have notes on this so why don't we get more into it later actually let's just
put this aside for now so let's check out the board first we've got our
Thunder FX audio solution so we'll take
a closer look at that there's the USB interface and then you can also just use
a standard stereo input which will allow it to amplify the
signal and output to wherever you need
it to go so there's your headphones as well as your microphone in Xbox 360
voice in is also included that's pretty cool this is awesome check this out so
this microphone Port right here is actually for active noise cancelling so
if you paired this let's say for example
ASUS's uh where did they go there they
are Vulcan noise cancelling headphones
you would have multiple rounds of noise cancelling going on so you would have
the closedness of the headphones you would have the noise cancelling built
into the headphones and then you'd have a microphone actively listening to what
is the ambient noise around you and then canceling that out at the sound card
level which is very very cool so what else we got here you can switch between
PC Xbox 360 and PS3 mode you can also
switch you oh yeah you've just got a volume knob and then that's pretty much
it for the physical attributes of the unit so this probably reminds you guys a
little bit of the essence one that we took a look at a while ago so it's more
like uh it's a it's well it's not quite an Essence one which is like a $600 USB
Dack and amplifier itself I mean this one's bundled with a motherboard but
it's a on the same lines in terms of trying to deliver the best possible
quality audio so there are advantages actually this is in line with their with
their Red Line concept so you see the red line that actually separates all of
the audio components on the PCB from the rest of the PCB this is to reduce
interference there's also Shields here to again reduce stray interference and
uh there is an advantage to keeping it separated from the PCB that way you then
get a further Advantage going with something like a high-end Zone R sound
card and putting that in a PC PCI slot or PCI Express slot because then you're
further removing yourself from all the hoo-ha that's going on inside your PC
case by removing it even further and plugging into via USB you can almost
completely eliminate it so that's one of the reasons that people do like using
these external USB sound cards so let's
start with just an overall look at the layout of the board so one thing that
you guys are probably going to be wandering about right right off the bat
is the Republic of Gamers logo in the middle they have brought back back the
breathing eye so it is no longer just illuminated it is not not illuminated it
has a breathing pulsating effect going on right under your CPU socket so that
should look really really cool once we've got it powered on um oh I jump
straight to the board I didn't do accessories just a sec all right coming
back to the board we'll do accessories later I guess so couple things I want to
mention is it comes with a full one-ear copy of kasperski and comes with a full
copy of demon tools which is kind of neat uh one thing to note though guys
about formula boards versus extreme boards because in theory like you know
an extreme level board should have everything a formula level board so why
is it that you can get this thunder FX one with a formula board not with an
extreme board and why does the formula board have this super high-end onboard
audio which we'll get more into later and not an extreme board the reason for
that is that ASUS is trying to appease the different market segments so an
extreme buyer user is not necessarily
even going to want to use onboard audio no matter how good it is they're probably going to want to buy like aad
dedicated couple hundred own our sound card to throw on it so there's no point
providing them with that high-end onboard audio anyway although it'll still be pretty decent so
um networking here we go so they're using Intel networking again however
they have completely redesigned the Intel game first uh technology that
allows you to prioritize gaming or prioritize other applications depending
on what you need and you can not only use it on the Intel gigabit Ethernet but
you can also use it on the included Wi-Fi network module and even if you add
a third party Nick like say even a multi-port Nick you can still use the
ASUS software that's built into AI Suite 2 in order to prioritize different
applications in and get the best possible experience so if even if you
load something in here you can still use game first 2 which has been completely
Rewritten from game first one in order to provide better compatibility and a
more seamless overall experience the reason I went with Intel versus killer
for this particular application cuz if you guys have seen some highend
motherboards are using killer networking is that they wanted that flexibility to
allow you to use it not only on this one network connection here but also on
everything else as well so I want to talk about the PCI Express slot layout
you it's going to run in 16x 8X 8X or it
will run in 8X 4X 4X now these are all
running directly off of the CPU and they are all PCI p e 3.0 enabled slots which
means that even if you're running 844
that's equivalent to PCIe 2 1688 which
is plenty of bandwidth assuming you're using newer Generation video cards that
use PCI E3 for three-way Crossfire configuration however NVIDIA doesn't
allow 4X slots for SLI so you'll be limited to 2way SLI but one cool thing
that you should notice guys is that as you may have seen ASUS is doing a lot of
triple slot graphics cards with their direct U2 cooler and there's a lot of
boards that aren't really compatible with multi-GPU configurations with these
cards well they thought of that and they went okay well let's leave huge spacing
in between the slots so that you can even use two triple slot um PCI Express
cards and still you're left with a PCIe 4X slot for expansion whether you want
to throw a raid card in there a network card in there or whatever else you have
a desire for so moving on to the vrm you
can't really see it very well well but something to note is that ASUS hasn't
gone overboard in terms of how many phases that they've built into the
voltage regulation modules or into well into the power delivery system on this
board instead of going with huge like multi a huge multiphase design they've
gone with a lower phase design that uses higher end components in order to make
sure that the tolerances are as low as
possible and speaking of low tolerances they've also gone with a slightly
different overall take on the component sourcing than some of their competitors
have as well so while okay while it's
interesting to see what a capacitor is rated for in terms of current delivery
at 105 degrees because that seems to a normal user you'd go okay yeah that's a
highly stressful environment so that probably represents a worst case
scenario there are power delivery designs that will perform extremely well
at 105 degrees Celsius but then will actually suffer in terms of their
efficiency at a more realistic temperature like maybe 70° which is what
you might encounter in a typical gamer system so ASUS wanted whether you're
using extreme cooling all over your system you're going to be water cooling your vrm and you know you're going to be
going all out on that or whether you're going to be going for like a silent
system and it's going to be running completely passive with very little air flow around it they want it to perform
well no matter what scenario that you're going to use it in so they're using
Nikon GT caps and uh this is the same
design they were using on their x79 boards and if it can handle x79 then d77
shouldn't be a problem also something
that isus specifically asked me to point this out is that they adhere fully to
Intel spec in terms of the build quality
of the socket itself the uh components
that go around the socket itself and it's not just the marketing spec of what
they've built over here but they can actually deliver the quality of power
that they're generating to to the CPU itself and not all solutions are built
equal in this manner it's also worth
remembering that it comes with all the usual ASUS features so there's actually
eight 4pin pwm fan connectors scattered
all over the board love seeing stuff like that there's two in here and you
can use fan expert 2 in order to control them some boards have fan control
options but not all of the ports are supported that's not the way that it
works with the ASUS one and you can even use external temperature probes in order
to control those fans so it has up to three probes and I can't remember where
all the slots are there's one uh so you just hook up these probes and you can
run them wherever you want them to go I think there's one sort of over here
somewhere anyway there's three run them wherever you want them to go whether it's a hard drive and then you have your
chassis fan plugged in in the front you make sure your hard drive stays cool if
it's getting too warm uh or wherever you want to put them you can adjust your fan
Curves in order to make sure that everything stays appropriately cooled
you've also got all your usual stuff including USB boost which gives you
better performance out of your usb3 ports you've also got AI charger which
supports not only Apple devices but also Android devices for Accelerated charging
over your USB ports uh there's the Thunderbolt header which is present on
almost all of the ASUS z77 boards which where is it it's around here
somewhere Thunderbolt header right there so there's the Thunderbolt header which
is allows you to add Thunderbolt retroactively to this board even though
it doesn't include it it supports USB BIOS flashback um which basically
doesn't really need anything actually hold on let us let us let me find that
no button required folks you just rename the BIOS file to this file name right
here you put it in the Rog connect port and then you restart the system and
there's some flashing lights that indicate when the BIOS is flashed
remember you can use USB BIOS flashback without even a CPU or memory installed
in the board all right moving right along then
Fusion Thermo this is cool so there's a heat pipe in here
right there and then there is also a water channel so you can either use air
cooling or liquid cooling and while it'll perform perfectly well with their
Cooling and they've designed it they've they're actually using these uh the
special coating that enables better heat conduction all that good stuff the heat
pipeing there blah blah blah all this it's a great air cooler however you can
get phenomenal performance with it by using a water cooling setup so these are
38 barbs and there's a little they're a little bit narrower on the board than I
would have liked to see however the restriction shouldn't be too bad because
I saw a cutaway diagram of how the uh how the routing of the tube is done
inside and they're using very smooth uh curves rather than using sharp 90° like
you often see um you know nonwater cooling oriented companies do so I would
expect this to not really slow down your flow rate that much and I'm very excited
to see that ASUS has made some significant improvements to the quality
of their water cooling versus what they were doing back in 2007 so it uses all
nickel and copper which means you're not going to run into any corrosion issues
if anyone had a foxcon Black Ops board and actually tried to water cool that
you know what I'm talking about those things corroded like crazy and just fell
apart so ASUS has figured all of that out and they want you to be running this
board two three four five years down the line without uh without well yes falling
apart so moving on to the Supreme FX4 audio this is discret class audio and
you look at how big the actual PCB that
is laid aside for your onboard audio is
and it's almost a sound card worth of space so it shouldn't be that surprising
that they're able to build in a fair amount of quality there so the red line
shielding actually is a physical separation of the PCB which is very very
cool and then uh they're using Ela
premium audio caps so those are all here and then this guy right here is kind of
special this is a 1500 microfarad massive cap it's what ASUS is calling it
a massive cap so what does this allow you to do it allows you to store power
in reserve for when you need it so let's say you know you're creeping down a
hallway and everything's really quiet and then boom there's an explosion that
requires additional power draw that can't necessarily be delivered on the
Fly by the normal Power delivery system that would go to something like an
onboard sound card so this capacitor right here is holding power in reserve
so it can deliver that responsiveness and that punchiness as soon as you need
the additional power to go to your sound card so that's a really neat design
choice that they've made they also went with audio grade caps which are
different so there are higher okay higher quality capacitors than what
they're using on here in terms of the current they can deliver however audio
caps use completely different electrolytic content and completely
different foil to give a certain tonality to the noise versus just
managing power which is what regular caps are more about so there's some
differences in how they respond to the requests and now isus believes that the
experience that they have in design audio products now I mean they've been doing Zonar for a while including some
very high-end stuff has given them some big advantages over what their
competitors are doing in terms of discret grade onboard audio and uh I'm
really excited to try this one out because between the 300 ohm headphone
amp which is here and the uh the shielded chip as well as the audio grade
caps and the super cap is is it super
cap massive cap sorry my bad and the massive cap I'm expecting this to
deliver a very good audio experience which start of
begs the question why would they include this with it and I guess it's so that
you have like like the the best and then like the even like Bist uh included with
the same with the same board and you have the flexibility of using that on
something else even when you're no longer using this motherboard which is kind of neat now let's go back to my
regular programming so there's your lg1155 socket lots of space around it
for aftermarket coolers you got your vrm cooling here which I think we've talked
about plenty already your 8 Pin plus 4 pin power connectors are in their ideal
location at the the top left of the board and then moving along the top of
the board you got some more CPU headers you got some ah there's a debug LED so
if you don't want to use this though remember guys you always have the option
of using R connect so there's the button to turn it on there's the port for it
and that's where you plug in a separate computer in order to you can monitor
things like temperatures you can change overclocking settings you can uh see ah
yes if you're booting up and for whatever reason you don't want to look inside your case lean over and look at
the debug LED it'll give you a plain text version of any kind of error so if
you accidentally turn on the computer without RAM in it plug this in it'll
just say there like there's no RAM so you better put some RAM in is kind of
neat okay slow mode don't worry about that unless you're going below 10° C so
or below -1° C so leave it off for for
now um you've got onboard switches start and reset you've got your Go Button
which works as a memo Button as well so if for whatever reason you're not
posting that'll set it to very very safe settings and get you going you've got
all your onboard here you want to get a close look at that all your onboard
voltage readouts so you don't have to trust the BIOS you can actually get ones
with you can get readouts with a multimeter you've also got ah these are
neat so these are little boot up LEDs that tell you the status of things as
you're booting up you've also got your ln2 mode jumper so don't worry about
that unless you're using liquid nitrogen 24 pin connectors in its ideal location
along the right hand Edge your front usb3 connectors in its ideal location
along the right hand Edge and they've also changed the configuration of the
SATA ports a little bit here too so there's only four SATA ports here that
are running off the Intel chipset two SATA 2 ports uh running at 3 gbit per
second two SATA 3 6 gbit per second ports and all four of these are running
off of as media chipsets so while you don't have the caching feature that you
get on the third party Marvel controllers you do have better
performance with these as media ones so that's why Seuss opted for that so you
have a total of six SATA 3 6 GB per second ports and uh two SATA 2 3 GB per
second ports remember you can still run caching off of the Intel ports should
you so desire all your front panel connectors are here TPM your Thunderbolt
headers down here talked about that already two front USB 2.0 connectors
auxiliary power in case you are running multiple gpus although if you're running
only two you should be fine your front panel audio connector on the other side
of the Thin Red Line and uh ah slot
layout so we've talked about this a little bit already but three PCI e1x
slots three PCI e6x slots and PCI 4X
slot make up all of that so the pulsating eye just so you guys know you
can if you for whatever reason don't like it you can unplug it and tuck it in
there without damaging the board in the
slightest ah up here this is cool so this is an mpcie combo and what we're
going to do is we're actually going to show you guys what goes on on this guy
so this is just a little check this out so you can use uh there's
mpcie and then there's also a an M SATA
slot and it supports both of them and then you plug the whole thing into this
module right here that sits up at the top of the board like this so you can
see there's already a dualband Wi-Fi module plugged in here wherever the
where are the antenna ports give me a sec so these two little nubbins have
little adapters that uh plug into them and then you plug the full size antennas
into them and run them out of the back of the case so that's the mini PCI E card that they include did I already say
it was Dual Band Wi-Fi as well as Bluetooth 4.0 okay cool and then there's
your m SATA slot so you can plug in an additional SSD should you so desire and
put the whole thing on here like this haha okay so we're not going to put
whoops we're not going to put that on for now but uh let's have a look at some
more accessories so there's your antennas that go with that you got some
included SATA cables four SATA 3 6 GB per second cables two SATA 2 3 GB per
second cables we've got an included Rog
flexy black SLI connector the very best
kind uh these are all related to thunder effect so we're going to hold off on
those for now IO Shield helpfully
labeled ah these are great so you can label all your hard drive cables so you
make sure you have boot discs make sure you don't accidentally unplug the wrong
thing at any given time there's your user guide which is extremely thick and
extremely thorough I think this is the thickest user manual I've seen from an
ASUS motherboard yet and we've used it a couple times throughout this unboxing to
clarify things and it's very helpful driver dis don't use that though
download the latest I'm gaming do not disturb door hanger very
cool Rog sticker with instructions for
application Rog connect cable as well as
Q connectors for the front making it easier to plug in your front USB and
front power in one Fell Swoop so let's
finish up with the rear IO uh clear seos Rog connect 3 USB 2.0
ports four USB 3.0 ports eeta display
port and H HMI out optical audio in and
out gigabit Ethernet and 7.1 audio with
like the beastliest onboard audio
powering it very good stuff so now let's
move along to the Thunder FX so this
should not be confused with Thunderbolt which is totally different although the
board does support a a Thunderbolt add-on card this is thunder FX this is
all about sound so we've looked at it physically now let's talk about what
makes it special so accessory wise it comes with a USB cable which has two
USBS on one end and one on the other end that's so that it can get enough power
okay you've got an Xbox adapter as well as other more different Xbox adapter for
your microphone in good stuff and that's
pretty much it in terms of included accessory cables so just wanted to
clarify something that I nubbed out on before so this is noise cancelling for
your microphone not for your headphones
themselves so you will need noise cancelling headphones which do their own noise cancelling for what you hear but
what this guy does is it listens to the
ambient noise and where' the microphone
for this go oh I must have left it at home okay well if the microphone was
plugged in I would be talking into my microphone and this would be isolating
the random ambient noise from the sound coming in through my microphone in order
to make sure that whoever I'm talking to hears me clearly even if I'm at a
crowded land Center so I think that pretty much wraps this up than thank you
for checking out my unboxing and first look at the Maximus 5 formula from ASUS
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