Gadgetory

as the soos is highest-end rog z97 motherboard the Maximus 7 formula has all the bells in it wait what sorry it's not supposed to come with any bells or whistles this is a piece of computer hardware not a summer camp counselor preparedness kit Coolermaster v-series semi modular power supplies feature 80 plus gold efficiency and their gold guarantee five-year warranty click now to learn more obviously I meant figurative bells and whistles with CPU performance pretty much equal across every motherboard running a given chipset a Seuss's approach to justifying the high price of a formula grade Republic of gamers board is to load it chock full of features that they hope will enrich the gaming experience let's find out if they succeeded first a physical tour it starts with the eye-catching plastic ROG armor plate on the front of the board an attractive if not particularly functional feature and a steel backplate something that may actually save you a motherboard RMA if you have a tendency to accidentally scratch the backs of your boards on motherboard standoffs the LGA 1150 socket is powered by an 8 + 4 pin connector setup although you only really need to plug in one of them and thanks to the new improved digi+ eight phase power design it performs optimally with any Intel CPU that fits in it ran is a similar story with digital power delivery and support for up to 33 hundred megahertz ddr3 RAM in dual channel we're talking ddr4 type range speed here on board Tweaker friendly dials include on-board power reset memo KK bot and sound stage buttons more on those last two later and finally to go along with a header for their external overclocking panel there are built-in voltage check points although I prefer the implementations of some other manufacturers who include multimeter friendly adapters instead of relying on my steady hands to get a reading moving further down the storage configure this board is super premium in some ways with dual SATA Express slots one from the Intel chipset and a second Media powered one each of which can become 2 SATA 3 slots for a total of 10 and yet kind of lacking in others with no rear eSATA and while it has an MDOT 2 slot on the M PCIe combo 3 thing that comes pre-loaded with a Bluetooth and dual band AC wireless card the aforementioned m dot 2 only works with short style drives due to clearance issues with the ROG Armour maybe that's why I soos also sent over their hyper n dot 2x4 expansion card that just plugs into a PCI Express slot something that's an extra for this board it's not something that I'm likely to use soon with M got two drives not being that plentiful and not really offering a tangible performance benefit yet but they also have other expansion options available such as their Thunderbolt 2 module that works on all of their z97 boards including this one with love to get my hands on one of those PCI Express gen3 expansion is handled by three PCIe 1x slots 2 PCIe 16x slots that are split to 8 X 8 X from both are in use and a final PCIe 4x slot that can be used for a graphics card and 3-way crossfire but unfortunately isn't usable for 3-way SLI now 3-way graphics configurations are not something that I really encourage anyway but I feel like for someone dropping almost $400 on a motherboard these days it should probably at least be an option anyway under these slots is a Seuss's best onboard audio implementation yet high-quality Dax and premium audio grade capacitors aren't exactly new but what is new with the 2014 edition of their supreme effects audio solution is the ability to amplify your games and music can provide a great listening experience no matter where you plug into which with the number of people using front panel audio connectors is a great step forward now let's take a quick look at the rear panel with its useful clear CMOS button abundance of USB 3 ports and some people won't care about this but I do ps2 port before moving on to the features and extras that Asus feels will help this product justify its high price compared to the more basic options that are also available for DIY PC builders first up is the best onboard fan control setup I've yet seen on a motherboard it's got eight sensibly positioned fan headers with what has become standard on Asus boards individual control of either PWM or DC fans via curves that can be adjusted according to onboard or manually position temp sensors awesome next up is key bought an onboard chip that sits electrically between your USB port and your keyboard and allows you to remap your f keys to other keys macros functions like media playback or program shortcuts the UI isn't particularly intuitive but once you set it up it actually seems to work pretty well when you toggle it on and off with this can be done in software or with an onboard button for some reason there's a bit of a delay longer the first time but nothing horrible it actually works on to sound features manner there are a lot of these first is their sonic radar which puts a visual representation of where noises are coming from on the screen it lets you adjust opacity and turn it on or off for different games with profiles next they've got their soundstage Hardware level EQ presets they only work on the front panel audio and if you live in bizarre universe you can press an onboard button to toggle them and use the post LED to see if you're in fps or sports mode or whatever or if you're a normal person you can change them in the control panel where you'll actually find a lot more stuff that I don't really use like artificial reverb effects smart EQ and Virtual Surround the good news is that within the panel there's also a ton of useful stuff like a software EQ DTS settings and their voice clarity feature to make in-game communications pop a little bit more and be easier to hear in summary the hardware of the audio on this board is great I mean it even auto detects the impedance of your headphones when you plug them in and adjusts the output accordingly but there are some dials in the software that many purists would never touch thankfully they have a test feature so you can do a be listening to see what sounds best for you I really wish they'd add a few more different sample audio tracks so that would make it a little bit more useful on to gain first networking the features in here are really cool and for a long time I actually had a killer NIC k1 installed in my personal system just to be able to Peter bandwidth or prioritize traffic between applications so this being powered by an Intel chipset instead of a Bigfoot one should be much better but I've had a fair bit of trouble with network connections working correctly with AI sweet and game first installed over the years and unfortunately this time around is no exception with my network connection sometimes taking five to even 15 minutes to start working correctly whenever I unplug it the saving grace is that once it is running it works like awesome though so your mileage may vary let me know in the comments how game first is working for you if you have an Isuzu motherboard and finally we've got their cross chill copper air / water vrm cooler and with this I think they finally nailed it mostly like last gen it's got G 1/4 thread so I can use my own fittings but this time we get copper internals so I'm not mixing any metals in my loop way to go a sous the only issue left is making sure that there's enough clearance for large compressions for the people who like those but my preferred 3/8 inch thick wall ones fit just fine so this is a total non-issue for me - thumbs up in the real world with the 4770k switching from air to water let me go from 66 degrees to 56 degrees on the vrm Center and a I sweet but I feel like that sensor isn't really positioned to be truly representative of the difference because the board feels much more cooler than that to the touch which leads us to conclusion time is the Maximus 7 formula a luxury item or is it a practical purchase I mean you do get some software extras like Kaspersky antivirus daemon tools Pro and a full copy of watchdogs yes it's better built and looks a lot nicer than the other stuff and you do get those little ROG extras like additional support over the longer term but while I do see more value in a high-end board these days now that generational cpu performance improvements from Intel are so small that you're likely to get a few generations out of it I also think the same could be said about a Seuss's z97 pro which is available for a little over half the price so the bottom line is yes it's a luxury item but at least it's a cool one guys like this video if you liked it dislike it if you like it leave a comment letting me know if you have any suggestions for future videos or comments that are more complicated than liking or disliking or whatever else check out the link in the video description to support us you can give us a monthly contribution buy a sweet t-shirt like 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