ASUS RoG Booth Poseidon Graphics Card, Maximus VI Formula & Impact - Computex 2013
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2014-05-07
·
2,348 words · ~11 min read
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Linus Tech tips coverage of computex 2013 is powered by Western Digital our
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trusted gaming gear partner is Corsair Vengeance and our trusted retail partner
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is nc.com welcome to Rog the only thing
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missing here is JJ because they have an unbelievable amount of Cool Tech on
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display this right here is a GTX 700
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series card they won't tell me what 700 series card it is which is usually a
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good sign and a very cool thing and this cooler design is called their cool Tech
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fan so it actually has an enormous fin array that's uh not all of it is even
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visible to us right now but it's okay cuz there's an exploded one over on the
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right it also has a hybrid cooler design
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that is able to do both air Cooling and
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see those right there those are G1 quarter fittings this bad boy can be
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liquid cooled as well so let's move over to the right here where we can see the
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way that the design of the card actually works so they've got a Digi Plus vrm
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with sap uh completely custom card over
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there so the idea is that okay we got a custom PCB design that gives us more
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efficient cooling uh more efficient power delivery so that you're not going
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to have any excess heat to get rid of then you throw a cooler at it that can
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get rid of all the excess heat anyway so that's the direct cuu H2O with their
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Cool Tech fan and they're claiming up to 10° better than reference just when
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you're air cooling it and finally of course it's an Rog product so there's a
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sweet looking shoud on it now let's move over to this is this is sort of what's
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really interesting about this so up to 20° cooler with a liquid cooling setup
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versus a reference cooler which you can see here is using full custom fittings
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this is one of the few things that I criticized about some of the previous
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ASUS liquid cooling capable products was the fact that they had built-in barbs
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and they were too small and you know most enthusiasts weren't going to want
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to use them now you can okay the TU the tubing
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itself within the card it's quite restrictive you can actually see it's
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very narrow but at least you can hook up whatever fittings you want and you can
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actually liquid cool your CPU with an aftermarket block this right here is a
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Maximus 6 formula which has built-in liquid cooling and then you've got the
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Poseidon card which has built-in liquid cooling as well now right now it's all
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over a test bench but trust me when you put this in your system it's going to
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look pretty freaking sweet and R OG motherboards they just keep pushing the
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envelope don't they now we first saw this with the deluxe class z77 ITX
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performance motherboard that has been stepped up a notch with the Maximus 6
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impact this features the full array of
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Rog features so you got their Supreme FX
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latest generation technology which has this check this out this is really cool
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so you get a visual indicator of where sounds are coming from ingame at all
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times so if the action's in front of you you're going to be able to see that if
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it's behind behind you you're going to be able to see that as an indicator you've also got an incredibly compact
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power delivery design that well that moves so let's just kind of try to look
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up here so much like the last generation board which was only a channel series
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Deluxe board this has a riser PCB
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because there wasn't enough room in the ITX form factor to fit all of the Power
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delivery and all the features that they wanted to on this particular board this
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is a Z87 board so you've got full support for the latest fourth generation
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has well processors and the that they've got these boards demoed is actually
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phenomenally cool so there's gigantic thermal R coolers on them that not only
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cool the CPU but also the memory and the vrm as well as the generally the PCB of
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the board itself and they're showing off their direct CU mini GTX 67 this is a
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short PCB card allowing it to be used in all kinds of creative configurations
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with uh with that said let's move over to the left here where we're going to
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see something very unique so this is a high performance machine running on a
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cool little Rog pedestal here similar configuration except check this out
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where's a graphics card what sorry what the graphics card
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is on the bottom on the back with the power supply I'm going to turn this
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around so you guys can see it check that out so you got an sfx power supply as
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well as a a ribbon cable that runs from
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the PCI Express slot all the way under this over to this GTX 670 graphics card
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so this is what I mean about it being a Mod's dream and Ena all kinds of cool
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new form factors without compromising anything in terms of
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performance so Gary from ASUS has actually dug up a bear board that we can
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show you guys rather than the one that was on the build now the reason that we
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want to see it in all of its gorgeous glory is that you can't it was covered
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in a big heat sink and you couldn't really see some of the unique technologies that went into it so it's
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an ITX form factor so when I say ASUS was wanted to deliver everything get in
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a standard Rog board then I mean that was a real challenge so one of the
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things that you could sort of see before was the raised pwm so this is the
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voltage regulation modules and all that good stuff this is where the power goes
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from something that your power supply outputs to something that a CPU and all
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the other components on here can use so there wasn't room for that there also
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isn't room realistically on an ITX board for a proper sound solution so that's
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where ASUS did their usual thing where they up the ante and they built an
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actual external PCB that's just for the
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impact board that goes right here so that way you can get highquality gaming
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grade audio without having to sacrifice
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the one expansion slot that you usually end up having well always end up having
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on a miniitx board the last thing that you couldn't really get a clear look at
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before was the mpcie combo 2 so this
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supports the m.2 standard which will allow you to plug drives in uh also
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known as Eng GFF which will allow you to plug drives in directly without using up
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one of your SATA ports because it is an mitx board you only have four of them
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and I think that's pretty much it now you guys can really get a closer look at
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what makes this truly Rog DNA but in a
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much smaller form factor thanks Gary you're
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welcome this is what I love about these shows there's all kinds of stuff here
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that actually doesn't exist this is the front base which unlike the OC panel
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which we've already seen on the Maximus 6 Extreme completely designed for
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overclocking you can adjust base clock by increments of 0.1 you can monitor
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temperatures down to Subzero all kinds of cool stuff you can do with that this
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is more optimized for gamers so it's more like that uh that higher level
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control so you want to be able to do things like monitor your CPU frequency
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your fan RPMs I think we were playing around with this before and I messed it
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up but don't worry too much about that you can monitor your CPU temperatures
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your time but that's not really it
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because there's other cool stuff that they want to a through this that this thing that doesn't exist yet so number
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one is there's going to be a one button over clocking method so you click the
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button CPU level up which already exists on the motherboard is enabled turns your
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CPU speed up next thing they're going to be enabling is a game recording button
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so if you're a gamer who's into gameplay videos Let's Plays any kind of cool
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thing like that all you got to do is press the record button which is going to be right here and uh I'm sure
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there'll be a way to trigger it through software or whatever else as well and
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you can get that going as well last but not least it integrates perfectly with
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ASUS's onboard Audio Solutions and they want to have a way for you to actually
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select different audio profiles simply using the dial on the front of your case
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rather than fussing about in the driver now of course not everyone's an extreme
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overclocker and there was a there was a Maximus 6 Extreme over hooked up to the
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OC panel and all that stuff but this is the formula this is optimized for gaming
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as opposed to peer overclocking so they've got Rog armor now that they've
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implemented not only on the saber-tooth series but also on their Rog series now
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it doesn't necessarily contribute a whole lot to the actual cooling of the
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board but what it does do is it increases the rigidity of the board when
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it's installed in the case so it's got a top piece as well as a back plate that
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ASUS has validated to not cause interference with your case so you
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should still have excellent case compatibility they've completely
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redesigned they've completely re thought the way that they do motherboard cooling
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as well so check this out this is the cross chill thermal design the only
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complaint I had about the integrated liquid cooling on the Maximus 5 formula
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was the fact that it did not have replaceable barbs they have addressed
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that so now they're using standard G1 quarter fitting mounts so you can see
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here there's some just random swifttech compression fittings that they're using
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there are no weird interference points or anything like that this looks like it
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was designed by by a water cooling company so you're supposed to touch here
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and touch here but you guys obviously ow won't be able to do that because you
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know it's video so check this out you can actually look at their OC panel
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right here which is taking temperature readings from the liquid cooled side and
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the air cooled side so there's heat loads under these and it's about 20°
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cooler with liquid cooling versus Air cooling now let's talk about the new
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supreme FX ASUS is really driving the industry forward when it comes to
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onboard audio I I personally hate onboard audio but the one onboard audio
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solution that I'll accept is from ASUS because they take a a separated
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dedicated part of the PCB and they put audio quality components on it this is
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what everyone refused to do for years and they have dramatically upgraded even
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the redline audio that we already saw on the Maximus 5 formula so check this out
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you're getting Elna premium audio capacitors why a film caps I don't even
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understand half this stuff but the point is that they are taking the engineering
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that went into products like Zonar and adding it directly to their motherboards
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this guy right here is a dedicated headphone amp and that's I can certainly
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tell you a larger headphone amp than I've ever seen on any other uh on any
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other motherboard it can handle up to 600 ohm impedance headphones and I don't
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see where it is right now but there's a Cirus logic CS 4398 DAC ASUS is claiming
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up to 120 DB sound to noise ratio on
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this board now that's not to say that features have to look bad this is what
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ASUS is expecting you to build with a motherboard like the Maximus 6 formula
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so you can see here the integrated liquid cooling that we've got on the
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motherboard back there it's using bits power fittings for these extremely clean
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and beautiful cable runs you've got a red liquid that's running around to it
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appears to be probably a GTX Titan would
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be my assumption but I'm not able to tell because there's an EK back plate
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covering the entire card right there now the one thing I'd say is missing from
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this as a high-end build normally is a dedicated sound card such as a feeis but
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you actually are getting to the point now where you can get onboard audio that
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is as good as highend dedicated on a motherboard if you spend the extra on an
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Rog board for me personally not being an extreme overclocker I'd be looking at an
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Rog formula board as opposed to an extreme even though it's actually less
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expensive thank you for checking out our coverage of the ASUS Rog booth at compex
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2013 don't miss any of our coverage and
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as always don't forget to subscribe to lineus Tech tips