Layout / Design

At a first glance the ASUS Maximus VI Formula 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. Apparently the "ROG Armor" is quite an eye catcher. On the one side of the board you find a nicely crafted plastic cover, which helps keeping dust away from the PCB and also makes the board look very nice. On the backside of the Maximus VI there is a plate made from SECC steel, which give the board great stiffness. Overall, when you take this board in your hands, it feels excellently built.

The ASUS Maximus VI Formula 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 "BlackWing Chokes". These chokes can cope with up to 60A per phase, whereas the predecessors that were used on the Maximus V Formula were good for 30A of current per phase. Furthermore there are 10K Black Metallic Capacitors, which have an average life expectancy of 10'000 hours. In other words, the Maximus VI Formula received the same power design, which can also be found on the bigger ASUS ROG Maximus VI Extreme motherboard.

Totally you'll find four DIMM-slots on the Maximus VI Formula. Officially supported are DDR3 3100 / 3000 / 2933 / 2800 / 2666 / 2600 / 2500 / 2400 / 2200 / 2133 / 2000 / 1866 / 1800 / 1600 / 1333 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 Formula the PCH is being cooled by a passive cooling block. A closer look at the area where the VRMs are, shows that there is one big heatsink, which can either be used as a passive cooler or, thanks to the two G1/4'' threads, it can be integrated into a watercooling loop. The design as well as the build quality is on an excellent level, which is typical for ASUS' Maximus VI series motherobards. Additionally, the steelplate on the backside of the motherboard also acts as a heatsink.