Layout

At a first glance the ASUS Maximus VII 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 VII 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 VII Hero. Officially supported are DDR3 3200(O.C.) / 3100(O.C.) / 3000(O.C.) / 2933(O.C.) / 2800(O.C.) / 2666(O.C.) / 2600(O.C.) / 2500(O.C.) / 2400(O.C.) / 2200(O.C.) / 2133(O.C.) / 2000(O.C.) / 1866(O.C.) / 1800(O.C.) / 1600 / 1333 MHz. There is enough 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 VII 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.

Page 1 - Introduction	Page 4 - Layout
Page 2 - Specs and Delivery	Page 5 - Connectors and I/O
Page 3 - Features	Page 6 - Conclusion