Maximus 4G Z. So, this is a version of a
microATX motherboard for the LG 1155
platform that includes support for SLI ATI Crossfire ATI Crossfire. I think
what they surely mean is AMD Crossfire X. It uses the Intel Z68 chipset. So
yes, this is a version of an MATX Republic of Gamers motherboard that uses
a ZType chipset rather than the P67
chipset, which means you have support for Intel SRT technology, which stands
for makes your hard drive go faster using an SSD. And then we've also got
support for Virtue, which is using the Lucid Hydrolologic software in order to
use the integrated GPU for things like transcoding video and saving power and
using your dedicated GPU or GPUs in the
example here for running games and like other baller stuff like that. Okay, so
Supreme FX X52 is built in, so you got decent onboard sound. Game first, which
is uh something to do with prioritizing your network traffic. OG Connect, which
is kind of neat. So, you can use a USB cable to plug in and overclock your
board using another computer. This is cool. BIOS print. One click. Easily
share your BIOS settings. So, you can print out your BIOS settings. Very neat
because this is very helpful for helping other people with their stuff. GPU
dimost is okay. This is kind of poorly
named actually because what they really mean is like GPU and
memory post diagnostics and I think
they're trying to shorten it a little too much because it's a cool tool but
they've made it kind of hard to communicate exactly what it does. So, from within the BIOS, you can actually
easily diagnose which cards are plugged into which DIMs, if they're detected
properly, or dims slots, uh, for the PCIe slots, whether they're being
detected properly, and that'll allow you to more easily diagnose any issues that
you're having with the system. So, let's
have a look at what we've got included. Here's our ROG connect cable. We've got
some um, uh, cable ties. We've got an short
SLI bridge. That's a flexible bridge. I prefer to see a black one or a red one
on a board like this, but that's okay. We've got front panel connectors. We've
got an ad for Zonar sound cards, which I definitely believe are
awesome. I'm a big fan of this guy right here, the
Zense. Although the Essence STX is very popular as well. Zense is what I'm using
personally, though. All right, we've got six SATA cables.
Two of which are SATA 36 Gbit per second right angle cables and four of which are
SATA 2 3 Gbit per second right angle cables. Although any of them will
probably work for any of them. Okay, we've got our IO shield, our user guide,
including a DVD, which you should throw away and download the latest drivers
from the ASUS website, Republic of Gamers sticker, which you cannot download from the ASUS website. You'll
have to you'll have to use that one. hard drive labels. So, you can go ahead
and label your uh your
cables. Label your cables on the
tables before playing all three
Fables, but not on a PC because Microsoft doesn't support the PC the way
they support Xbox, which is not really related to this motherboard. Here's an
ROG sticker.
There we go. All right, let's go ahead put these things back in here. Put the
other thing back in the other thing. Put this thing in the thing. That thing in
the thing. And all
right, this is the Maximus 4 G&Z.
you know, ever since the original um
like, okay, do you guys remember how hard it was to find a performance
microATX motherboard even a few years ago? Like I remember back in the NF4
days, EVGA was the only one the only one
who went and released an N4 SLI motherboard in the microATX form factor.
And even then, it wasn't a great board. I mean, it it had all kinds of bugs. I
had one at one point. It was not a great board. It had like a goofy color scheme.
It was just terrible. And then all of a sudden, DFI started this trend. They
released a performance microATX board. And all of a sudden, Gigabyte and ASUS
and MSI, they're like all on this bandwagon of performance boards. And I
think it's great because the reality of it is this is all your power and your
CPU socket and your memory. And that's all the same size as an ATX board. Here
you've got enough room for dual GPU. So
whether it's SLI or Crossfire, you can put in two dual slot GPUs. And since
you've got decent onboard sound, decent onboard LAN, decent onboard everything
else you could possibly need. I mean, this this is this is now just a smaller
version of everything that you could put on an ATX board. You've got all of that
performance, even things like voltage checkpoints, and uh you save a little
bit of power by using a smaller PCB, fewer chips and all that good stuff,
powering fewer slots. And yeah, it's just smaller. I think small gaming boxes
are cool. I built myself a gaming box in an SG01
uh Sugo system. It was water cooled. I took the top of the system and I turned
the whole thing into a triple rad and then like put a little shroud around it
and put some grills on it so people wouldn't like stick their fingers
in. So yeah, sorry the battery run out.
I'm back. All right, so let's have a look at the overall layout of the board. Here's our LG A155 socket, which
supports all the latest Core i3, Core i5, and Core i7 CPUs, including unlocked
ones because this is a Z68 board. So, all those overclocking features are
enabled. We got some beefy looking heat sinks here. Check those out from an
angle. They look kind of like like 2D sprites of something like a dragon. See?
See? Check this out. There's his little eye and there's his little like mouth
thing. And there's his wings right there. Like that's his wing. That's kind
of like his rump right there. See, you see the dragon? Cool. I think
it's a dragon. So, our eight pin power connectors up in the top left corner of
the board. We've got a couple of uh Look at that. Two CPU fan connectors. See,
why does it take ASUS to think of simple things like that? So many CPU coolers
have dual fans. Why don't you have two CPU fan headers? Well, ASUS thinks you
do need two CPU fan headers. And I think they're right. four DDR3 DIM slots uh
supporting up to probably 32 gigs of memory would be my guess in dual channel
because that is what is supported by these CPUs. We've got all of our V
checkpoints here including ground DRAM CPU SAOP PCH iGPU CPU PLLP CPU and an
additional ground. Our 24 pin power connectors in its ideal location along
the right hand edge. We got another four pin PWM fan connector, one USB 3.0 front
panel connector. There's your BIOS chip if you care. We've also got two SATA 3 6
Gbit per second ports and four SATA SATA 3 6 Gbit per second ports and
four SATA 2 3 Gbit per second ports. Got a chipset heat sink here. It's not
cooling much these days. There's not a whole lot that goes on in the chipset.
We've got our front panel connectors. So for your power reset, all of that good
stuff. Two USB 2.0 front panel ports.
Another four pin PWM fan connector. They really do squeeze a lot onto this tiny
PCB. Post readout start and reset switches that are both built on. front
panel audio and then the two times PCIe
16X slots. Although this one is only wired for 8X. So what you've got
essentially here is 16X 8X 8X or 16X 1X
4X 8X 8X 4X. That is what you are
looking at. So here is yet another four pin PWM. And let's go ahead and count
them all. So, one, two, three,
four, five. Five four pin PWM fan
connectors. Ah. Ah. So, let's have a look on the back. We got 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
8. Yep. Eight USB 2.0 ports. We've got a
PS2 keyboard mouse combo port. We've got the uh that's the BIOS reflashing. No,
that's Clear Simos. Look at that. Okay. Clear Simos. Two USB 3.0 ports. Gigabit
Ethernet. Optical audio out. HDMI out, which you're going to want to go ahead
and use if you want to use the uh Intel
shoot. What's it called? Uh quick smart response. No, hold on. Smart response
technology is the hard drive one. Quicksync, I think it's quick sync. The
one where you use your integrated GPU in order to do uh video transcoding. We've
also got 7.1 audio out, and those look like gold-plated connectors. Very nice
touch. So, thank you for checking out my unboxing of the Maximus 4 Ganz from
ASUS. Don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech Tips for more unboxings, reviews,
and other computer videos.