ASUS Maximus IV Extreme P67 SLI Gaming Motherboard Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2011-05-08
·
1,942 words · ~9 min read
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Maximus 4 extreme this is a p67
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motherboard it is evidently designed for overclocking it is part of the Republic
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of Gamers brand from ASUS it supports the latest Intel Core i7 Core i5 and
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core I3 processors if for whatever reason you're putting a core I3 on
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Extreme motherboard which you shouldn't be doing um on the LGA 1155 platform it
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features the Intel p67 chipset it is fully SLI ready and ATI Crossfire X
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ready although that should probably be called AMD Crossfire X at some point it
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features the I direct which is a on of
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gosh darn minute a Bluetooth no well you
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know what we'll get into that later Rog connect which I am familiar with so you
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use a USB cable to plug into a thirdparty computer using a utility to
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overclock your PC 3D Mark vantages included 10 USB 3.0 ports two at the
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front eight at the back uh We've also got a Bluetooth module accessory card
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which is included RG connect which we talked about already
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supports three-way SLI and Crossfire X so not four-way but three-way is just
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plenty for an LGA 1155 socket anyhow I
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mean remember the CPU only has 16 PCI E
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Lanes built into the uh the controller anyway oh you know what I haven't showed
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you the whole package yet there we go so more of the same information here uh oh
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okay I direct here we go tune your PC from your iPhone or iPad now
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nice just in case you want to Extreme
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Engine Digi plus so that is uh powerful combination of analog and digital design
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elements for the vrm there's the motherboard itself let's get this baby
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opened up so accessories box first because I always tease you guys like
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that here we go lots of accessories this
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is a high-end board so it has all the accessories so this is that uh Bluetooth
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module okay this is our three-way SLI
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Bridge here's our two-way oh rather Crossfire Bridge here's our two-way SLI
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Bridge we're going to put those all together this didn't seem organized right to me all right we've got some zip
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ties we've got the Q connectors we've
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also got um voltage checkpoints so
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probit quick installation thing so you can check the voltages and we'll cover
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that when we have a look at the board itself IO Shield couple temp probes
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three to be exact uh Maximus 4 extreme user guide
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including uh sticker and installation DVD as well as labels for your SATA CA
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so you can keep track of which or which once you've already routed them in your case finally exclusive feature guide so
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Rog connect RC Bluetooth and rogi direct
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overclocking from your iPhone next I'm expecting them to include uh utility
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that lets you overclock your iPhone got that weird case sticker the big huge one
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that I did eventually find someone who had installed it on their case so that
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was uh that was interesting next we've got the Rog connect cable which is a USB
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cable with Rog stamped on it essentially okay we've got four SATA 3 6 gbit per
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second cables which are only different from the other ones and the fact that they're white they're all right angle
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and then we have four more right angle SATA 2 connectors we have rear USB 2.0
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bracket and that is it for the
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accessories now let's close that back up
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and have a look at the board itself so ASUS has had the whole Republic of
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Gamers color scheme thing just figured
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out for a while now I mean look at this this looks fantastic oh you're in the
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light cameraman way to go all right so from that angle this should look pretty
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darn impressive which is what it looks like in person so why don't we start at
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the middle of the board here's our LGA 1155 socket surrounded by the digi plus
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vrm so you can see here that they're using a fairly different looking design
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for the for the voltage regulation modules remember that clean voltage to
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your CPU is very important for achieving the highest possible overclocks we've
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also got I mean they've done such a good job of these on the last few generations
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of boards really neat looking mosfet heat sinks as well as the heat pipes
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that tie them into the Northbridge heat sink and then uh nothing connected but
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you can see that the Southbridge heat sink is stylized similarly as well now I
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do know they're not called North Bridge and Southbridge anymore but I'm old
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school like that you're not going to break that habit sorry guys all right
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we've got our 8 Pin power connector up here at the top of the board right where
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it belongs top left ideal location now
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we don't have dual eight pins but I would go as far as to say that's completely unnecessary on a p67 board
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all right we've got uh let's move this way so we have four DDR3 slots
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supporting dual Channel these are the easy install slots so they only have
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Clips on the one side you put your module in like this and you clip it closed all right we've got built-in
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start and reset switches we have liquid nitrogen mode switch on and off so that
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might be handy if you're benchmarking with liquid nitrogen this this is smart
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this is a much better place for the Post LED because you can actually see this
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when you have graphics cards installed love it start reset also we have the PCI
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e6x switches these I'm a big fan of as
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well if especially if you have water cooling installed full cover blocks it
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can be real pain to troubleshoot which card is on the fritz so you can turn off
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your PCIe lanes and boot to whichever card you want here are all the uh
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voltage checkpoints so we have RAM CPU
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uh nf200 chip even uh PCH PLL uh PCH CPU
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IO CPU P CPU oh sorry this is uh CPU SAA
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all right moving down we have the Go Button we have a 24 pin power connector
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and its ideal location along the right hand edge of the board we have SATA IO
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so the red ones red ones are SATA 3 6 GB
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per second these ones are running off the Intel chipset these ones are running
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off a third party chipset these are SATA to 3 GB per second and since this is a
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B3 revision board they are not affected by the bug that affected the original
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p67 boards here's a bio switch so we have two dedicated Hardware BIOS chips
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you can save one set of settings in the other one and then if you're experimenting you can switch over to
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your other BIOS boot up to that one and then play around with whatever it is you
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want to do here's all your front panel connectors moving right along we've got
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clear seos somewhere there's a little
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arrow pointing somewhere not sure what in the heck okay you know what just
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don't one to2 disable enable one 2 to three disable two clear seam mode I I
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don't know what this does okay forget it okay we've got four USB 2.0 front panel
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headers cuz they didn't really have any room for them on the back since it's
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full of USB 3 couple fan headers we've got a couple of easy plugs so one two
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easy plugs so if you are installing a ton of graphics cards I would definitely
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recommend using those because they will help provide some supplementary power to
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your cards we have 1 2 3 4 four PCI e6x
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slots uh they are all wired for no hold
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on one two three of them are wired for
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16x so those ones are going to be running off the nf200 chip this one is
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only wired for adx so if you install three cards you're going to be using up
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this this and this you will have no room for additional expansion cards now this
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one right here is PCI e1x uh that one's going to have full bandwidth regard
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regardless this is a PCI e4x that's running off the chipset so that one will
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have full bandwidth regardless of what you install in all these slots so these are going to run in uh I could check the
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manual but I'm just going to guess correct me if I'm wrong should be
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161616 or it could also be 8888 but you
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can't run four-way SLI or Crossfire anyway so I don't really see the point
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of doing that unless you're folding folding at home okay USB 3.0 rear panel
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header so that's an interesting location for that I guess if you're going to put
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like a PCI bracket in that would be useful and then finally I think that's
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pretty much it so here's where the Bluetooth module installs the one that was in the packaging and one more thing
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back out from the board so this is not a
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standard ATX board like many Republic of Gamers boards in the past it is slightly
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wider so an ATX board would end right here this board ends right here so while
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you don't need an eatx case you do need an ATX case um that is a little bit
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wider than the farther far rightmost mounting holes to make sure that you'll
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be able to install this board now another thing I want to talk talk about
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is we have 1 2 3 four oh here back out
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cuz you're not going to be able to see where I'm pointing 1 2 3 4
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5 six 7 eight pwm fan headers on this
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motherboard so you can plug in a ton of fans to this motherboard without
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overloading it all right let's have a look at the back iio plate last but not
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least we've got a PS2 U PS2 keyboard
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mouse combo Port 1 2 3 4 5 6 78 USB 3.0
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ports two eeta ports a clear Simo switch
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optical audio out two Intel gigabit
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network connections so these are not using third party controllers we have
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the Rog connect button as well as the r connect Port as well as 7.1 audio out on
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the back of the board we find a couple of heat sinks for the mosfets so those
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are going to give you an additional little bit of heat dissipation on the back of the board and also of noticed
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the fact that all of the heat sinks on this motherboard are using screws
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spring-loaded screws with plastic washers to ensure no shorting out and
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also no disengaging like you can have happen from time to time with those
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plastic Clips thank you for checking out this unboxing of the Maximus 4 extrem
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