ASUS Maximus IV Gene-Z Gaming Motherboard Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2012-05-07
·
1,637 words · ~8 min read
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Maximus 4G Z. So, this is a version of a
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microATX motherboard for the LG 1155
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platform that includes support for SLI ATI Crossfire ATI Crossfire. I think
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what they surely mean is AMD Crossfire X. It uses the Intel Z68 chipset. So
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yes, this is a version of an MATX Republic of Gamers motherboard that uses
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a ZType chipset rather than the P67
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chipset, which means you have support for Intel SRT technology, which stands
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for makes your hard drive go faster using an SSD. And then we've also got
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support for Virtue, which is using the Lucid Hydrolologic software in order to
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use the integrated GPU for things like transcoding video and saving power and
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using your dedicated GPU or GPUs in the
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example here for running games and like other baller stuff like that. Okay, so
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Supreme FX X52 is built in, so you got decent onboard sound. Game first, which
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is uh something to do with prioritizing your network traffic. OG Connect, which
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is kind of neat. So, you can use a USB cable to plug in and overclock your
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board using another computer. This is cool. BIOS print. One click. Easily
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share your BIOS settings. So, you can print out your BIOS settings. Very neat
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because this is very helpful for helping other people with their stuff. GPU
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dimost is okay. This is kind of poorly
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named actually because what they really mean is like GPU and
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memory post diagnostics and I think
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they're trying to shorten it a little too much because it's a cool tool but
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they've made it kind of hard to communicate exactly what it does. So, from within the BIOS, you can actually
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easily diagnose which cards are plugged into which DIMs, if they're detected
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properly, or dims slots, uh, for the PCIe slots, whether they're being
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detected properly, and that'll allow you to more easily diagnose any issues that
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you're having with the system. So, let's
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have a look at what we've got included. Here's our ROG connect cable. We've got
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some um, uh, cable ties. We've got an short
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SLI bridge. That's a flexible bridge. I prefer to see a black one or a red one
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on a board like this, but that's okay. We've got front panel connectors. We've
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got an ad for Zonar sound cards, which I definitely believe are
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awesome. I'm a big fan of this guy right here, the
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Zense. Although the Essence STX is very popular as well. Zense is what I'm using
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personally, though. All right, we've got six SATA cables.
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Two of which are SATA 36 Gbit per second right angle cables and four of which are
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SATA 2 3 Gbit per second right angle cables. Although any of them will
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probably work for any of them. Okay, we've got our IO shield, our user guide,
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including a DVD, which you should throw away and download the latest drivers
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from the ASUS website, Republic of Gamers sticker, which you cannot download from the ASUS website. You'll
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have to you'll have to use that one. hard drive labels. So, you can go ahead
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and label your uh your
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cables. Label your cables on the
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tables before playing all three
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Fables, but not on a PC because Microsoft doesn't support the PC the way
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they support Xbox, which is not really related to this motherboard. Here's an
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ROG sticker.
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There we go. All right, let's go ahead put these things back in here. Put the
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other thing back in the other thing. Put this thing in the thing. That thing in
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the thing. And all
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right, this is the Maximus 4 G&Z.
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you know, ever since the original um
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like, okay, do you guys remember how hard it was to find a performance
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microATX motherboard even a few years ago? Like I remember back in the NF4
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days, EVGA was the only one the only one
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who went and released an N4 SLI motherboard in the microATX form factor.
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And even then, it wasn't a great board. I mean, it it had all kinds of bugs. I
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had one at one point. It was not a great board. It had like a goofy color scheme.
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It was just terrible. And then all of a sudden, DFI started this trend. They
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released a performance microATX board. And all of a sudden, Gigabyte and ASUS
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and MSI, they're like all on this bandwagon of performance boards. And I
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think it's great because the reality of it is this is all your power and your
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CPU socket and your memory. And that's all the same size as an ATX board. Here
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you've got enough room for dual GPU. So
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whether it's SLI or Crossfire, you can put in two dual slot GPUs. And since
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you've got decent onboard sound, decent onboard LAN, decent onboard everything
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else you could possibly need. I mean, this this is this is now just a smaller
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version of everything that you could put on an ATX board. You've got all of that
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performance, even things like voltage checkpoints, and uh you save a little
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bit of power by using a smaller PCB, fewer chips and all that good stuff,
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powering fewer slots. And yeah, it's just smaller. I think small gaming boxes
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are cool. I built myself a gaming box in an SG01
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uh Sugo system. It was water cooled. I took the top of the system and I turned
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the whole thing into a triple rad and then like put a little shroud around it
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and put some grills on it so people wouldn't like stick their fingers
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in. So yeah, sorry the battery run out.
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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
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supports all the latest Core i3, Core i5, and Core i7 CPUs, including unlocked
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ones because this is a Z68 board. So, all those overclocking features are
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enabled. We got some beefy looking heat sinks here. Check those out from an
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angle. They look kind of like like 2D sprites of something like a dragon. See?
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See? Check this out. There's his little eye and there's his little like mouth
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thing. And there's his wings right there. Like that's his wing. That's kind
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of like his rump right there. See, you see the dragon? Cool. I think
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it's a dragon. So, our eight pin power connectors up in the top left corner of
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the board. We've got a couple of uh Look at that. Two CPU fan connectors. See,
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why does it take ASUS to think of simple things like that? So many CPU coolers
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have dual fans. Why don't you have two CPU fan headers? Well, ASUS thinks you
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do need two CPU fan headers. And I think they're right. four DDR3 DIM slots uh
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supporting up to probably 32 gigs of memory would be my guess in dual channel
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because that is what is supported by these CPUs. We've got all of our V
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checkpoints here including ground DRAM CPU SAOP PCH iGPU CPU PLLP CPU and an
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additional ground. Our 24 pin power connectors in its ideal location along
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the right hand edge. We got another four pin PWM fan connector, one USB 3.0 front
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panel connector. There's your BIOS chip if you care. We've also got two SATA 3 6
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Gbit per second ports and four SATA SATA 3 6 Gbit per second ports and
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four SATA 2 3 Gbit per second ports. Got a chipset heat sink here. It's not
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cooling much these days. There's not a whole lot that goes on in the chipset.
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We've got our front panel connectors. So for your power reset, all of that good
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stuff. Two USB 2.0 front panel ports.
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Another four pin PWM fan connector. They really do squeeze a lot onto this tiny
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PCB. Post readout start and reset switches that are both built on. front
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panel audio and then the two times PCIe
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16X slots. Although this one is only wired for 8X. So what you've got
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essentially here is 16X 8X 8X or 16X 1X
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4X 8X 8X 4X. That is what you are
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looking at. So here is yet another four pin PWM. And let's go ahead and count
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them all. So, one, two, three,
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four, five. Five four pin PWM fan
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connectors. Ah. Ah. So, let's have a look on the back. We got 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
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8. Yep. Eight USB 2.0 ports. We've got a
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PS2 keyboard mouse combo port. We've got the uh that's the BIOS reflashing. No,
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that's Clear Simos. Look at that. Okay. Clear Simos. Two USB 3.0 ports. Gigabit
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Ethernet. Optical audio out. HDMI out, which you're going to want to go ahead
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and use if you want to use the uh Intel
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shoot. What's it called? Uh quick smart response. No, hold on. Smart response
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technology is the hard drive one. Quicksync, I think it's quick sync. The
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one where you use your integrated GPU in order to do uh video transcoding. We've
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also got 7.1 audio out, and those look like gold-plated connectors. Very nice
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touch. So, thank you for checking out my unboxing of the Maximus 4 Ganz from
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ASUS. Don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech Tips for more unboxings, reviews,
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