Gadgetory

Maximus for Jean Z so this is a version of a micro ATX motherboard for the LGA 1155 platform that includes support for SLE like it di cross by ATI crossfire I think what they surely mean is AMD crossfire X it uses the Intel z68 chipset so yes this is a version of an m-80 X Republic of gamers motherboard that uses a Z type chipset rather than the P 67 chipset which means you have support for Intel SRT technology which stands for mix your hard drive go faster using an SSD and then we've also got support for virtue which is using the lucid hydrologic software in order to use the integrated GPU for things like transcoding video and saving power and using your dedicated GPU or GPUs in the example here for running games and like other baller stuff like that okay so so premium FX X Phi 2 is built-in so you got decent onboard sound game first which is something to do with prioritizing your network traffic Rajee Connect which is kind of neat so you can use a USB cable to plug in and overclock your board using another computer this is cool BIOS print one-click easily share your BIOS settings so you can print out your BIOS settings very neat because this is very helpful for helping other people with their stuff GPU dim post is okay this is kind of pulling named actually because what they really mean is like GPU and memory post Diagnostics and I think they're trying to shorten it a little too much because it's a cool tool but they've made it kind of hard to communicate exactly what it does so from within the BIOS you can actually easily diagnose which cards are plugged into which dims if they're detected properly or dims slots for the PCIe slots whether they're being detected properly and that will allow you to more easily diagnose any issues that you're having with the system so let's have a look at what we've got included here's our ROG connect cable we've got some cable ties we've got an short SLI bridge that's a flexible bridge I prefer to see a black one or a red one on a board like this but that's okay we've got front panel connectors we've got an ad for zone R sound cards which I definitely believe are awesome I'm a big fan of this guy right here the sense although the essence STX is very popular as well dense is what I'm using personally though all right we've got six SATA cables two of which are say two three six gigabit per second right angle cables and four which are say two to three gigabit per second right angle cables although any of them will probably work for any of them okay we've got our i/o shield our user guide including a DVD which you should throw away and download the latest drivers from the Asus website Republican gamers sticker which you cannot download from the Asus website you'll have to have to use that one hard drive label so you can go ahead and label your your cables label your cables on the tables before playing all three tables but not on a PC because Microsoft doesn't support the PC the way they support Xbox which is not really related to this motherboard here is an ROG sticker there we go all right things back in here the other thing back in the other thing all right this is the Maximus Ford Jean Z you know ever since the original like okay do you guys remember how hard it was to find a performance micro ATX motherboard even a few years ago like I remember back in the unforce four days EVGA was the only one the only one who went and released an n force for sli motherboard in the micro ATX form factor and even then it wasn't a great board I mean ooh it had all kinds of bugs I had one at one point it was not a great board had like a goofy color scheme just her and then all of a sudden dfi started this trend they released a performance micro ATX board and all of a sudden gigabyte and a zeus and msi they're like all on this bandwagon a performance boards now i think it's great because the reality of it is this is all your power and your cpu socket in your memory and that's all the same size as an ATX board here you've got enough room for dual GPU so whether it's sli or crossfire you can put in two dual slot GPUs and since you've got decent onboard sound decent onboard land decent onboard everything else you could possibly need I mean this this is this is now just a smaller version of everything that you can put on an ATX board you've got all of that performance even things like voltage check points and you save a little bit of power by using a smaller PCB fewer chips and all that good stuff powering fewer slots and yeah it's just smaller I think small gating boxes are cool I built myself gaming box in an SG oh one Sugo system was water-cooled I took the top of the system and I turned the whole thing into a triple rad and then like put a little shroud around it and put some grilles on so people wouldn't like stick their fingers in so yeah sorry the battery ran out I'm back all right so let's have a look at the overall layout of the board here's our LGA 1155 socket which supports all the latest core i3 Core i5 and core i7 CPU including unlocked ones because this is a z68 board so all those overclocking features are enabled we got some beefy looking heat sinks here check those out from an angle they look kind of like like 2d sprites of something like a dragon Jinxy check this out there's this little eye and there's this little like mouth thing and there's his wings right there like that's his wing it's kind of like his rump right there see you see the dragon cool I think it's a dragon so our eight pin power connector is up in the top left corner of the board we've got a couple of look at that two CPU fan connectors see why does it take a Seuss to think of simple things like that so many CPU coolers have dual fans why don't you have two CPU fan header as well asou thinks you do need two CPU fan headers and I think they're right for ddr3 dimms slots supporting up to probably 32 gigs of memory it would be my guess in dual time because that is what is supported by these CPUs we've got all of our V checkpoints here including ground around CPUSA io PCH I GPU CPU PLL CPU and an additional ground our 24-pin power connectors and it's ideal location along the right-hand edge we got another four pin pwm fan connector one USB a 3.0 front panel connector there's your BIOS chip if you care we've also got to say two three six gigabit per second ports and four SATA SATA 3 six gigabit per second ports and four stated two three gigabit per second ports got a chipset heatsink here that's not cooling much these days there's not a whole lot that goes on in the chipset we've got our front panel connectors so for your power reset all that good stuff two USB 2.0 front panel ports another four pin PWM fan connector they really do squeeze a lot on to this tiny PCB post readout start and reset switches that are both built on front panel audio and then the two x PCIe 16x slots although this one is only wired for 8x so what you've got essentially here is 16 X 8 X 8 X or 16 X 1 X 4 X 8 X 8 X 4 X that is what you are looking at so here is yet another 4 pin PWM and let's go ahead and count them all so 1 2 3 4 5 5 4 pin PWM fan connectors uh uh so let's have a look on the back we've got 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 8 USB 2.0 ports we've got a ps2 keyboard mouse combo port we've got the that's the BIOS reflashing nope that's clear seamless look at that ok clear CMOS 2 USB 3.0 ports Gigabit Ethernet optical audio out HDMI out which you're gonna want to go ahead and use if you want to use the Intel XI what's it called quick smart smart response no hold on Smart Response technology is the hard drive one quick sync I think it's quick sync the one where you use your integrated GPU in order to do video transcoding we've also got 7.1 audio out and those look like gold plated connectors very nice touch so thank you for checking out my unboxing of the Maximus 4 Jean Z from a Sousa don't forget to subscribe to on set ups for more boxing's reviews and other computer videos