Layout
At a first glance the ASUS
Maximus VI Hero looks very good with its harmonic design. Once again the
ROG-colors - red, black and white - suite
nicely and together with the black PCB it becomes a beautiful product. The
layout itself is well thought and there is for example plenty of space around
the CPU socket to install even todays largest CPU coolers. The fact that there
are SATA connector which have been angled by 90 degrees
allow an easy installation of oversized graphics cards.
The ASUS Maximus VI Hero comes with a
digital 8+2 phase power design. The CPU gets eight phases and the memory gets a stable current supply from two individual
phases. Furthermore ASUS equips this board with their so called "Black Metallic
Chokes". Furthermore those chokes can cope with up to 60A per phase. These can resist temperatures ranging from -70°C to +125°C.
This makes the power desing even better for extreme overclocking where extremely
low temperatures around the CPU socket can be reached.
Totally you'll find four DIMM-slots on the
Maximus VI Hero. Officially supported are DDR3
2800 (OC), 2666 (OC), 2600(OC), 2400 (OC), 2200 (OC), 2133 (OC), 2000 (OC), 1866 (OC), 1600, 1333
and 1066 MHz. There is engough space between the DIMM-slots and the CPU socket which
means that you wont encounter compatibility problems with big coolers even when you choose to install RAM with big heatspreaders.
Also supported are Xtreme Memory Profiles (XMP) in version 1.3.
On the
Maximus VI Hero the southbridge is being cooled by a
passive cooling block. A closer look at the area where the power VRMs are shows
that there are two additional heatsinks, which have been connected with a
heatpipe. If you know the more expensive overclocking boards from ASUS you quite
often find PLX bridge chips. In order to achieve a lower price point ASUS did
not equip this board with such a chip.
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