ASUS Maximus VI Extreme Unboxing & Overview
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2014-05-07
·
2,939 words · ~14 min read
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This video is brought to you by Cooler Master featuring the Siden 240mm
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all-in-one CPU water cooling system. Check it out at www.coolermaster-usa.com.
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Welcome to my unboxing and first look at the cream of the cream of Z78 boards.
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This is the Maximus 6 Extreme from ASUS. It includes everything except the
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kitchen sink, but it's okay because you can probably get rid of your kitchen
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sink and swap it out with one of these guys. This is the OC panel and it's got
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a lot of cool functionality that we're going to get into throughout this video.
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The motherboard comes with full versions of Kasperski and Demon Tools, which I
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think is a really cool value ad for enthusiasts who buy it. On the outside
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of the box, ASUS does a really good job of spelling out exactly what makes the
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board special. So, there's the OC panel,
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the MPCIE combo 2, as well as the Extreme Engine Dig Plus 3 technologies
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covered on the inside of the front of the box, which we'll cover in much more
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detail once we get the board out. And then on the back, they've got pretty
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much the same stuff. They talk about four-way SLI and Crossfire, as well as
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some of the connectivity on the board. So, let's go ahead and get this bad boy
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opened up. Now, the Extreme board is positioned more for overclockers than
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specifically for gamers. So, you're going to find some of the features and
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some of the places where ASUS has spent a lot of time and a lot of money
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developing this board are more beneficial to those guys who are looking
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to push for every last megahertz of
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frequency on their CPU and not so much
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towards guys who are just going to kind of dial it into a safe setting and leave
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it there. which isn't to say that it won't have safe profiles. It's just, you
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know, you don't get things like a more advanced uh separated part of the PCB
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for your audio solution like you do on a formula grade board with the Xreme. So,
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let's go ahead and open up the box of accessories, of which there are many.
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We'll start with the Q connector, which allows you to more easily plug in your front panel connectors. A padded labeled
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IO shield in the traditional ASUS fashion. We have the custom sleeved
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cable for the OC panel, which plugs directly into the board and then into
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the bottom of the OC panel unit. A user's guide, which you should pretty
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much look at online if you need it. These are cool. Labels for your SATA
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cables so you can tell which one is which at both ends, as well as their
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There we go. For ROG Connect, they've got a USB A to A cable. So, if you don't
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want to use the OC panel, then you can actually plug into a separate computer
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like a laptop and control settings from there. Three-way SLI bridge, four-way
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SLI bridge, two-way SLI bridge, all
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black, all matte, all gorgeous. And finally, a Crossfire bridge that is in
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the same style. Now, this is really nice. Check this out. Republic of Gamers
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decal for your case that unlike most case decals actually has some heft to it
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and feels solid and attaches with a magnet so that it doesn't it's not a
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one-time use thing. We have the MPCIE
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combo port MPCIE combo 2 rather excuse
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me module that sits on the MPCIE port at the top of the board. More on that in a
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moment. It has both uh Wi-Fi dualband AC
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as well as Bluetooth 4.0 know builtin eight SATA 36 Gbit per second cables
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which crazily oh no 10. There you go. You got enough for every single port on
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the board. And finally, an external magnetic antenna for the built-in AC
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wireless. Last but not least, we have a
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5 and a/4 in bay adapter for the OC panel itself. So you can put the LCD in
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the front of your case if you don't want to have a little separate thing sitting
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next to you or you're not operating on an open test bench. which leads us to
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our second black box. The first thing we see inside of which is the OC panel.
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Now, the OC panel can work in a number of different ways. And I'll start with
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one of the most basic things in that is the fact that this LCD can tilt up so
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that it can be mounted in that five and a quarter inch adapter that I showed you
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before, giving you access to things like your level up button, which turns your
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overclock on and off with a hardware switch here, power button, fan control,
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and all kinds of other cool functionality that can be enabled with
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this device. We'll get into more depth with it once we've had a chance to be
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hands-on and really play with it when we're doing our Haswell overclocking
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guide. So stay tuned for that guys. It's going to be awesome. The other way to
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use it is sitting on your desk popped out like this where it looks a lot like
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how many guys would have a multimeter or
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something like a temperature sensor sitting next to them while they're
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overclocking. Speaking of temperature sensors, this is very cool. It actually
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uses their subzero sense technology is what they're calling it to detect
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temperatures that are as low as liquid nitrogen. So this is suitable not only
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for making changes to your clock speeds or whatever else, but also for actually
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monitoring those. So it's a serious tool meant for people who are actually at the
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top of the field in terms of overclocking. And extreme mode has other
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cool stuff about it like VGA hotwire which allows you to actually directly
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overvolt supported ASUS graphics cards with this unit as well. And I mean
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there's all this cool stuff here too. Check this out. So inside here you've
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got see you've also got a SATA power in in addition to the data which allows you
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to hook up some uh four pin PWM fans that you can run off the OC panel itself
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as well as control things like slow mode. What slow mode does is sometimes
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liquid nitrogen overclockers don't want the PC to boot up as fast as possible.
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So slow mode is there for that pretty much more than anything else. as well as
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some other really cool things in here, including there you go, direct voltage
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checkpoints that are again built into the board, but also built into the OC
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panel itself. Not everybody needs that functionality though. I got briefed on
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this thing by Andre Yang himself. And so what he did is he helped design it. If
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you guys know overclocking, I hope you've heard of Andre Yang. And he also
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spent a lot of time with it once it was done creating profiles that less
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advanced users can just implement. So, all you really have to do is go, okay,
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well, I want to be able to, you know, monitor my fans and monitor my temperatures and make small tuning
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adjustments by pressing the buttons on it, and that's all fine and good and cool, but at the end of the day, you
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know, maybe what I end up doing is plugging in one of Andre Yang's profiles
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and going at it from there. So, it has a more basic mode available to you as
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well, which leads us to the board itself. Now, the first thing I noticed
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about it might seem weird to you, but that's that it's in a standard ATX form
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factor this time around. no extra width which we do normally see on the extreme
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level boards. Next up, and I mean this is okay, overclockers are always looking
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at what has ASUS done in terms of power delivery to make it so you can eek every
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last bit out of the CPU. So, we see something we've seen for a couple
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generations now, and that's dual CPU power connectors. In this case, an 8 pin
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and a 4 pin. And we also see a completely redesigned voltage delivery
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system. We've got their super premium 10K black metallic solid state
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capacitors that ASUS figures are good for up to five times the lifetime of
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what you'd see from a typical cap and are capable of operating at up to 20%
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higher temperature tolerances. But that's not the only thing that's optimized temperature- wise here. The
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NexF MOSFETs operate at 90% efficiency,
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meaning very little power is lost to heat. And their Blackwing chokes, due to
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the design of the wing on them, are able to operate up to 3 to 5 degrees cooler.
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So the idea is that while it's completely overbuilt in terms of how
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much power it can deliver to the CPU, it is not sacrificing any of the efficiency
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and cool operation that you would want from the power delivery system. Now the
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CPU socket itself is an LG 1150 socket supporting the latest fourth generation
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Intel Core series processors code named Haswell. And over here you're going to
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find four DDR3 dual channel memory slots. Now, something notable about
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Haswell is that much higher frequencies of DDR3 are supported. However, once you
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start to overclock the CPU, um, you know, the DDR3 2800 MHz to 3 GHz speeds
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that you'll typically get on a H on a good Haswell chip are going to start to
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go down to the point where once you're overclocking the CPU to the max, your
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RAM overclocking options are going to be somewhat more limited. Up in the top
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right, we've got a post LED next to this
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is pretty cool. So, ASUS has built a custom three pin, fourpin slash,
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whatever the heck this thing is, CPU fan
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header. So, what it does is it actually has a separate little sensor in there
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that tells the com the motherboard whether you're using a three pin or a
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four pin fan and then will adjust the way that it controls your CPU fan
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profile accordingly without any intervention from the user. Very, very
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cool. Also up here at the top right, we've got one of those slow mode buttons
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that's built directly into the board if you're not using the OC panel. Start and
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reset switches built in on board. More voltage checkpoints for pretty much
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everything you could imagine. So you can use your high-end multimeter to check all that stuff. I love this feature,
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guys. DIP switches for turning on and off individual PCI Express slots on the
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board, especially once you've got a bunch of water cooled GPUs in there.
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Diagnosing a problem with a graphics card can be an absolute nightmare. So,
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being able to turn them off one at a time to figure out which one's causing the issue without taking the cards
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physically out is awesome. The memo K button uh helps you diagnose non-post
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situations where memory with aggressive profiles might not post correctly. And
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our 24 pin connectors in its ideal location along the right hand edge of
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the board along with a USB 3 connector in its ideal location along the right
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hand edge of the board. We've got two more. There they are. are Blackwing
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chokes. So, those are the two that are providing power to the memory. Remember
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guys, with memory frequencies going way the heck up, it's going to be helpful to
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be able to deliver as clean power to it as you possibly can. Over here, we have
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six SATA 36 Gbit per second ports powered by the Intel chipset and four
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powered by an AS Media chipset, giving you a total of 10. And it should be
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noted that if you use the MPCIE combo NGF slot or M.2 two slot up in the top
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left that one of these ports will be disabled. Now, I want to talk about that
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for a moment now. So, they include a module here. So, this is mini PCIe and
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USB 2 connectivity that's in here. So, they include a module. There you go.
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That gives you Bluetooth 4.0 as well as wireless 802.11 AC. However, it should
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be noted that it does support the M.2
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standard. So, you would be able to plug an SSD in there as well instead of
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having it plugged into a SATA port. Down here at the very bottom of the board,
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we've got a BIOS switch as well as our
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front panel connectors, two USB 2.0 connectors, the ROG external connector
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for the OC panel, a Thunderbolt header, meaning you can use an add-in
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Thunderbolt card to add Thunderbolt connectivity to this board, a direct key
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button, the fast boot button, as well as
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your audio header. Now, I mentioned before it doesn't have a similarly
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highgrade audio solution like what you might find on a formula board, but I
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think the assumption from ASUS is if you are spending this much money on a
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motherboard and the associated hardware that goes with it, you're probably
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buying something like a Feebis to put in it anyway. All right. Now, this is one
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of the things that really gets me geeking out about this board. We've got
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four PCI Express 16x slots. Okay, fine. There's another one here that's wired
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for 8X. And then we've got a PCI Express 4X slot. But what's unique about these
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is the flexibility that they afford. Normally on a nonX79 or a non uh premium
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tier platform from Intel, you've either got 16x or 8x8x or 44. I I don't think
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they even support 444. Or you'll have some kind of um splitter lane spplitting
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chip that will allow you to achieve higher bandwidth but at a at a latency
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penalty that usually doesn't really result in better performance. What ASUS
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has done here is they've given you the option, okay, to either run 16x
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8x 8x in two slots without using any any
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splitters or intermediary bridge chips so you can get that low latency if you
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don't need the extra bandwidth or 8x 8x 16x 8x using a PLX chip so that you can
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achieve four-way SLI on the board and you'll have to take that latency hit for
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running so many graphics cards, but at least This way, people who are running
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one or two don't have to deal with that. Love that. And if you're running a ton
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of graphics card, I would recommend using the easy plug right here. That
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does provide some additional power to the board so that you don't risk burning
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out your 24 pin, which is otherwise relied on for all the power to those
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components other than the plugins that go in the back of the video card. Now,
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while the hardware for audio might not be anything special compared to the
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formula grade board, the software is still right up there. So, they've got
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their new Supreme FX3 software, which includes what they're calling sound
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radar, which gives you a visual overlay of where sounds are coming from in game,
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uh, without actually even relying on your ears at all, which would be, I mean, the, uh, the implications are very
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cool, particularly for people who don't hear well or have hearing loss in one ear, being able to take advantage of
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positional audio like that. This BIOS switch is a hardware switch that allows
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you to, well, switch between the two physical BIOS chips that are integrated
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on the board. So, even in the event of a bad flash, you can quickly and easily
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switch to a completely different profile, and you can use it to segment
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your experimentation profile from your daily driving profile. Finally, on the
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back of the board, we've got a SMOS clear button, ROG connect button, two
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USB 2.0 ports, six USB 3.0 ports, a
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gigabit Ethernet port provided by an Intel chipset that's going to give you
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less overhead, less throughput, less overhead, and more throughput. We've
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also got DisplayPort and HDMI ports supporting up to 4K display outs,
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optical audio and 7.1 audio out. And last but not least, and I really do
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still like to see this, a PS2 keyboard mouse combo port. Sometimes PS2 just
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does work the best. On the back of the board, we've got a couple more coolers
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for the MOSFETs. And that is pretty much all she wrote about the Maximus 6
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Extreme. Guys, tune in for our overclocking guide on Haswell, which is
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going to feature this board and the OC panel. Do like the video, do share the
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video, and as always, don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech Tips for more
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