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as ausa's highest end Rog z97

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motherboard the Maximus 7 formula has all the bells

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and wait what sorry it's not supposed to come

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with any bells or whistles this is a piece of computer hardware not a summer

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camp counselor preparedness

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kit Cooler Master V series semi modular

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power supplies feature 80 plus gold efficiency and their gold guarantee

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5-year warranty click now to learn more obviously I meant figurative bells and

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whistles with CPU performance pretty much equal across every motherboard

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running a given chipset ausa's approach to justifying the high price of a

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formula grade Republic of Gamers board is to load it chalk full of features

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that they hope will enrich the gaming experience let's find out if they

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succeeded first a physical tour it starts with the eye-catching plastic Rog

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armor PL on the front of the board an attractive if not particularly

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functional feature and a steel back plate something that may actually save

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you a motherboard RMA if you have a tendency to accidentally scratch the

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backs of your boards on motherboard standoffs the LGA 1150 socket is powered

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by an 8 plus 4 pin connector setup although you only really need to plug in

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one of them and thanks to the new improved Digi Plus 8 pH power design it

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performs optimally with any Intel CPU that fits in it RAM is a similar story

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with digital power delivery and support for up to 3,300 MHz DDR3 RAM in dual

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Channel we're talking ddr4 type range

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speed here onboard tweaker friendly dials include onboard power reset memo K

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kbot and Sound Stage buttons more on those last two later and finally to go

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along with a header for their external overclocking panel there are built-in

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voltage checkpoints although I prefer the implementations of some other

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manufacturers who include multimeter friendly adapters instead of relying on

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my steady hands to get a reading moving further down the storage config of this

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board is super premium in some ways with dual SATA Express slots one from the

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Intel chipset and a second as media powered one Each of which can become two

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SATA 3 slots for a total of 10 and yet kind of lacking in others with no rear

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EA and while it has an m.2 slot on the

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mpcie combo 3 thing that comes pre-loaded with a Bluetooth and dualband

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AC wireless card the aforementioned m.2

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only works with short style drives due to clearance issues with the Rog armor

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maybe that's why ASUS also sent over their hyper m.2 X4 expansion card that

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just plugs into a PCI Express lot something that's an extra for this board

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it's not something that I'm likely to use soon with m.2 drives not being that

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plentiful and not really offering a tangible performance benefit yet but

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they also have other expansion options available such as their Thunderbolt 2

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module that works on all of their z97 boards including this one with love to

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get my hands on one of those PCI Express gen 3 expansion is handled by three PCI

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e1x slots two PCIe 16x slots that are split to 8X 8X when both are in use and

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a final PCIe 4X slot that can be used for a graphics card and three-way

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Crossfire but unfortunately isn't usable for three-way SLI now three-way Graphics

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configurations are not something that I really encourage anyway but I feel like

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for someone dropping almost $400 on a motherboard these days it should

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probably at least be an option anyway under these slots is ausa's best onboard

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audio implementation yet highquality Dax

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and premium audio grade capacitors aren't exactly new but what is new with

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the 2014 edition of their Supreme FX audio solution is the ability to amplify

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your games and music and provide a great listening experience no matter where you

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plug into which with the number of people using front panel audio

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connectors is a great step forward now let's take a quick look at the rear

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panel with its useful clear seos button abundance of USB 3 ports and some people

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won't care about this but I do PS2 Port

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before moving on to the features and Extras that ASUS feels will help this

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product justify it's high price compared to the more basic options that are also

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available for DIY PC Builders first up

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is the best onboard fan control setup I've yet seen on a motherboard it's got

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eight sensibly positioned fan headers with what has become standard on ASUS

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boards individual control control of either pwm or DC fans via curves that

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can be adjusted according to onboard or manually positioned temp sensors awesome

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next up is keybot an onboard chip that sits electrically between your USB port

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and your keyboard and allows you to remap your F keys to other Keys macros

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functions like media playback or program shortcuts the UI isn't particularly

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intuitive but once you set it up it actually seems to work pretty well when

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you toggle it on and off with this can be done in software or with an onboard

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button for some reason there's a bit of a delay longer the first time but

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nothing horrible it actually works on to sound features man are there a lot of

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these first is their sonic radar which puts a visual representation of where

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noises are coming from on the screen it lets you adjust opacity and turn it on

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or off for different games with profiles next they've got their Sound Stage

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Hardware level EQ presets they only work

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on the front panel audio and if you live in bizarre Universe you can press an

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onboard button to toggle them and use the post led to see if you're in FPS or

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sports mode or whatever or if you're a normal person you can change them in the

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control panel where you'll actually find a lot more stuff that I don't really use

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like artificial Reverb effects smart EQ

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and virtual surround the good news is that within the panel there's also a ton

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of useful stuff like a software EQ DTS

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settings and their voice Clarity feature to make in-game communication

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pop a little bit more and be easier to hear in summary the hardware of the

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audio on this board is great I mean it even Auto detects the impedance of your

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headphones when you plug them in and adjust the output accordingly but there

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are some dials in the software that many purists would never touch thankfully

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they have a test feature so you can do ab listening to see what sounds best for

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you I really wish they'd add a few more different sample audio tracks so that

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would make it a little bit more useful on to game first networking the features

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here are really cool and for a long time I actually had a killer Nick K1

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installed in my personal system just to be able to meter bandwidth or prioritize

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traffic between applications so this being powered by an Intel chipset

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instead of a Bigfoot one should be much better but I've had a fair bit of

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trouble with network connections working correctly with AI suite and game first

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installed over the years and unfortunately this time around is no

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exception with my network connection sometimes taking 5 to even 15 minutes to

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start working correctly whenever I unplug it the Saving Grace is that once

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it is running it works like awesome though so your mileage may vary let me

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know in the comments how game first is working for you if you have an ASUS

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motherboard and finally we've got their

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cross chill copper air/water vrm cooler

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and with this I think they finally nailed it mostly like last gen it's got

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G14 thread so I can use my own fittings but this time we get copper internals so

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I'm not mixing any Metals in my Loop way to go ASUS the only issue left is making

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sure that there's enough clearance for large compressions for the people who

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like those but my preferred 38 in thick wall ones fit just fine so this is a

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total non-issue for me two thumbs up in the real world with a 4770k switching

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from air to water let me go from 66° to

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56° on the vrm sensor and AI site but I

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feel like that sensor isn't really positioned to be truly representative of

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the difference because the board feels much more cooler than that to the touch

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which leads us to conclusion time is the Maximus 7 formula a luxury item or is it

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a practical purchase I mean you do get some software extras like kasperski

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antivirus demon tools Pro and a full copy of Watch Dogs yes it's Better Built

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and looks a lot nicer than the other stuff and you do get those little Rog

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extras like additional Support over the longer term but while I do see more

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value in a high-end board these days now that generational CPU performance

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improvements from Intel are so small that you're likely to get a few

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Generations out of it I also think the same could be said about a susus z97 pro

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which is available for a little over half the price so the bottom line is yes

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it's a luxury item but at least it's a cool one guys like this video if you

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liked it dislike it if you disliked it leave a comment letting me know if you have any suggestions for future videos

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or comments that are more complicated than liking or disliking or whatever

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else check out the link in the video description to to support us you can give us a monthly contribution buy a

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sweet t-shirt like this one or change your Amazon bookmark to one with our

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affiliate code so we get a small Kickback whenever you buy like I don't

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know um um I'm completely blank I'm just tired

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when you buy things that are available on

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Amazon thanks for watching again and as always don't forget to subscribe

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he