Basically the ASUS Maximus VII Gene's Layout has been very well thought. Once more practical are the angled SATA connectors as well as the power- and reset-buttons. There is also a debug display which is very useful in case you should have issues with a component in your system or the board itself. Regarding the PCI-Express x16 slots there we have nothing to complain about. A closer look at the area around the CPU socket shows, that there is plenty of space to install big aircoolers without running into any issues. What we also liked is where the power and reset buttons are. Especially when you overclock memory using liquid nitrogen, then it makes sense to not have them next to the DIMM slots, since they will free quite quickly. Like with the Z87 based Maximus VI Impact also the Maximus VII Gene now gets ASUS' SupremeFX audio solution on an add-in-card. This allows for a cleaner PCB design and helps solving shielding related issues.