ASUS Maximus III Gene P55 mATX SLI Motherboard Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2010-05-08
·
1,291 words · ~6 min read
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So today we're going to be having a quick look at the Maximus 3 Gene this is
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part of ausa's Republic of Gamers line of motherboard so it includes cool
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features like Rog connect plug and overclock tweak it the hardcore way
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whatever that means uh me perfect which is optimizing your memory without
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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
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this is the button that you press to make sure that you run any memory at
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bone stock settings at kind of a safe setting to make sure that you can post
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and then after you post you can tweak the memory afterwards okay you've got
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supreme FX X5 built in so it includes
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all of those high-end features but what we haven't shown you is that this is a
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microatx motherboard so this is part of their LGA 1156 line of motherboard so it
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supports core i7 and core i5 it also supports core I3 although I can't
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imagine buying a really expensive board like this and putting a core I3 on it it
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does support SLI and Crossfire so if you're doing like a small Extreme Gaming
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rig like in a go or another small form factor case this would be a perfect
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motherboard for it it's Windows 7 ready and we'll flip it around to the back
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where it says basically the same thing as it said on the inside so why don't we
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get this box opened up and have a look so the first thing we find inside is the
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motherboard bam just like that like all of their Republic of gamer boards it has
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a very very cool catchy color scheme but we're going to actually take it away
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from you haha and look at the accessories first so we have a USB cable
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okay thank you for that just your standard a TOA cable uh there's got to
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be something in here it plugs into there's no reason for that SLI Bridge
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remember if you need a crossfire Bridge it should come with your video card okay
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then you've got some zip ties for cable management you've got the users guide as
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well as the oh okay this is interesting so you've got a users guide You've Got A
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drivers and installation DVD as well as a republic of Gamers sticker don't use
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this DVD download the latest off ASUS.com all right and then this is neat
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so they've included little stickers for labeling your hard drives so uh and
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colorcoded too so that way you don't have to when you've routed all of your
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cables through the case you don't have to fuss around with which one connects
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to which drive so you can make a little label like oh this is my 750 gig and
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this is my 500 gig and this is my SSD very cool and then your users's guide is
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all English and very thick so I'm not even going to try to go through that all
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right then we have a huge Republic of Gamers sticker that goes all the way
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over to the to the other side here and it's kind of come off a little bit uh
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hopefully we can get that off without damaging it too much okay there you go
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so that's I guess for your case window all right very nice then you have your
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IO Shield which is their black premium looking IO shield with the uh kind of
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poofy shiny stuff on the back then we have six SATA cables three of which are
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right angle and three of which are straight and then we have our Cube
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connector okay so I don't actually see what that USB cable is for but I guess
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we'll get to that later so here's the Maximus 2 Gene like all p-55
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motherboards and I hope I mentioned it's p-55 you do have support for an LGA 1156
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socket and you do have support for dual Channel DDR3 memory and you should use
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the color-coded slots this board does have a s's unique feature where this
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side of the memory mod slot is not a clip only the other side is an actual
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clip so what you do is you slide the memory in this side with the clip open
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push it down and clip it shut with just one side it's in theory makes installing
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memory a little bit easier your power connectors are in their ideal locations
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at the top left corner of the board where you have an 8 Pin power and then
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over on the right hand edge of the board where you have your 24 pin power one
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thing that I really like that ASUS is doing with their Republic of gamer
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boards is they're starting to include way more four pin fan connectors so if
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you look at this board we've got one 2 3
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four five four pin power connectors so
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that means you can pwm control all the fans in your case without any additional
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hassle we've got two PCI Express 16x slots that will run at 8X 8X if you're
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running in crossfire one PCI Express 4X
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and one PCI slot for expansion you've got kind of a little uh cover here on
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the chipset that looks pretty neat it's got like a mesh here so it gets a little
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bit of ventilation and then you've got your onboard start and reset buttons you
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got the premium ones that look kind of like cool then you've got two I was
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going to say two but I guess it's three USB spe headers and here is a plug for
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the OC station which I believe is available separately it doesn't actually
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come with it here's your onboard Supreme xfi FX and let me see if I'm missing
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anything here oh yeah yeah yeah um over on this side okay so you've got six SATA
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cables running off the chipset and one additional one here running off a third
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party chipset here is your Go Button I
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think that's the memo button actually I hope it is anyway all right so let's go
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around to the back and we'll find out why we have like a random lone SATA port
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here and I'm assume it's because yes
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there's e SATA on the back of the board so that's where the other SATA port from
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that controller is you've got a PS2 keyboard Port then you've got 1 2 3 4
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eight USB 2.0 ports as well as another
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USB port here which I guess is what that cable was for it must do something
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specific something to do with this I think it's their little overclocking
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thing okay and then you've got a seos clear switch I love this this is great
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means you don't have to fish around in your case especially because it's a
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microw TX board that's going to be a real hassle so you can just press this
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to clear the seos digital audio is provided by
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Optical only then you've got fire wire isata gigabit Ethernet and 7.1 audio
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those look like goldplated connectors too so thank you for checking out my
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unboxing of the Maximus 3 genan