Index
Introduction & Specifications
Unboxing & Layout
BIOS & Software
Multimedia, Multitasking & Gaming Benchmarks
Overclocking & Conclusion
Unboxing and Accessories
For an ROG product, the packaging of the Maximus VI Hero is fairly understated, as it comes with limited essentials and almost no goodies at all, barring the ROG door-knob tag. The accessories are meant only to fulfill the most basic requirements when setting up a motherboard, and they get the job done. Also, for reasons I fail to understand, our box was missing the driver CD. This is a motherboard that is brand new and hasn’t been used by anybody else before, so the missing driver CD is puzzling. I asked ASUS why this was the case, and they said it must have been held by some other media outlet. Just to put to the table, out of all the ASUS products I’ve used, I have never had this issue.
Board Layout
Looking closely at the Maximus VI Hero, the good quality and clean, structured layout is instantly evident. This is one area where ASUS tends to excel. This is a completely new SKU for ASUS, barring the slot layout which is a common practice. The Maximus VI Hero, as marketed by ASUS, is a ‘budget’ gaming full-ATX motherboard with the ROG exclusives. The Hero is priced similarly to the Maximus VI Gene, which is a micro-ATX motherboard. ASUS polled ROG users and found that users of Gene boards bought it only because of its’ cost and features, but what they really wanted was a full-ATX board. And ASUS has offered that with the Maximus VI Hero. And thus the layout of Maximus VI Hero is more like a stretched out Maximus VI Gene. Its seems less cluttered and busy.
The Maximus VI Hero has four USB 3.0 ports on the I/O panel instead of the usual six. It also lacks the mini PCI-E Combo II port that most ASUS ROG motherboards have. The board supports SLI and CrossFireX with 8x speed per PCI-E slot (16x). There is a fourth PCI-E 16x slot but it offers only 4x the speed and is PCI-E 2.0. You won’t be needing this slot unless you’re using three or four graphics cards simultaneously. Aside from the USB ports, the I/O panel has 1x HDMI port, 1 PS/2 keyboard and mouse port combination, 1 RJ-45 LAN port, 1 optical output, and 6x mini-stereo jacks.
The CPU socket area is neat and free of any connectors, making it convenient for most builders and enthusiasts alike. The heat sinks are distanced appropriately from the CPU sockets. Installing an aftermarket air cooler or water cooler shouldn’t be a problem as there is ample space to clear the MOSFET coolers. DIMM slots are alternatively black and red, and can support up to 8GB/slot in memory and 2800Mhz in speed. These numbers can surely rise with some overclock (more on that later).
A deeper look at the layout, we see that it misses an mSATA port, additional power connectors, WiFi and Bluetooth . This is truly a budget ROG motherboard. This is a very ‘practical’ motherboard as it does away with the bells and whistles, delivering you the essentials only, but with high quality precision. In other words, a minimalist master. The Maximus VI Hero is big on fan controllers. There are three chassis 4/3-pin fan headers, there’s a second CPU fan header and also one of ASUS’ new detection latch headers, which allows the board to control the speed of three and 4-pin CPU fans.
There are inclusions of power and reset switches, CMOS clear button, LED post code readout, Directkey (a BIOS shortcut button) and USB BIOS Flashback. LAN socket consists an of Intel I217V Gigabit controller, and the TDMS (HDMI signal convertor) is provided by Parade.
One nifty feature in the Maximus VI Hero is the design and placement of the integrated audio controller. Sure, it is just a Realtek based sound card, but it holds ASUS’ SupremeFX audio shielding technology. This means, to prevent static noise arising from internal magnetic and electrical interference, the sound card section is cut off from the rest of the motherboard circuitry. This makes it interference free, theoretically. The isolation line lights up by a series of LEDs when the board is on, looks sweet!
Index
Introduction & Specifications
Unboxing & Layout
BIOS & Software
Multimedia, Multitasking & Gaming Benchmarks
Overclocking & Conclusion
[…] Platinum GTX 760. The first RoG product we reviewed was the Maximus IV Hero motherboard, which we thoroughly enjoyed. While we have already reviewed the stock GTX 760 from NVIDIA, we decided to put the Striker […]