ASUS Maximus VII Formula Review
Published by Hiwa Pouri on 15.08.14Page:
Conclusion
| Overall | + | - | |
| At a first glance the Maximus VII Formula definitely leaves an excellent impression. The mix of overclocking features and high quality audio hardware makes this a state-of-the-art motherboard for ATX-gaming. And next to a very nice looking design you find useful features like for example GameFirst III. This software allows you to configure your network device the way gaming traffic gets prioritized (keyword traffic shaping). Furthremore you get ASUS' RAM Disk Software and lots of other goodies, which make this board even more appealing. From a design perspective the "ROG Armor" looks excellent. Together with the possibility to watercool the VRMs, this board is perfect for modding, The Maximus VII Formula is one of the rare complete Z97 motherboards on the market, since it features M.2 and dual SATA Express. | -
Design - Layout - Features |
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| Layout | + | - | |
| Basically the ASUS Maximus VII Formula'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. The placement of the PCI-Express x16 slots is very well chosen too. There is a total of three full sized PCI Express slots and inbetween the first two there is two slots space. Should you want to build an SLI/CrossFire rig, then the card will be able to suck in fresh air perfectly, since there is plenty of space inbetween. Apart from that it's also not a problem to install a large CPU cooler, since there is plenty of space to even install todays largest air coolers. Another feature gamers will like is the onboard audio solution. Subjectively compared to the Maximus VI Formula, the sound with this board is clearer and more accurate in a linear manner. The layout is also good for extreme overclockers, since there is plenty of space between the memory slots and CPU socket. This make the board easy to use, when you drive memory and CPU at subzero temperatures. Like on previous models from ROG power and reset button as well as debug LED can be frozen easily and they are not usable anymore but when we pay attention to the rest of layout we can see there is no space to replace them. | -Angled SATA
connectors
- Power/Reset-Button onboard - Debug display - Space around the CPU socket |
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| Performance |
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| Calculating the average of all 3D benchmarks we ran, we see that this board ranks second in our comparison tables, which include values from all Z87 motherboards we've tested too. When taking the average of all 2D results, this board is able to outperform all other boards we've had for testing. Other than that, when it comes to overclocking performance, there is not too much to say, since this board is simply perfect for any kind of extreme overclocker. On another note, we had a look at power consumption and noticed that this board burns quite some power, which is due to the high feture density. | -
3DMark 11 - 3DMark Vantage - SiSoft Sandra - Games |
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| BIOS - Overclocking |
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ASUS
has a beautiful looking BIOS when it comes to their ROG series motherboard. The
UEFI BIOS gets a black background instead of red, which was used on earlier ROG
series motherboards. Again there EzMode is also there again and it lets you
monitor different temperatures, check out system information and also set XMP
profiles. If we dig a bit deeper we als find different memory presets allowing for easier optimizations. This makes memory overclocking simpler, especially for the less experienced overclockers out there. The same goes for CPU overclocking, where you basically get the same features like with memory overclocking. A cool thing in this case is the gaming profile, since it's been done really well. When we went on to overclock our Intel Haswell sample, reaching 5.2 GHz on air was piece of cake. Apart from that a vast majority of memory ICs is supported, including CFR and BFR from Hynix and this motherboard just flies when using Samsung ICs, since you can set very tight teritary timings. Continuing with timings we see that the board is capbable of setting very good values all on its own, when it comes to RTL and IOL values. In the case of tRDWR and tRDWR-dr you can set them as low as 11 and tRDWR-dd at 7, which is only possible with ASUS Maximus VII Formula and Impact. We also had a look at Hyper memory and noticed, that, like with all Z97 motherboards, compatibility is not too good. When we were testing stability we found out that running MFR ICs at 3.2 GHz on air is just easy, but of course you need a CPU with good IMC (integrated memory controller). We're actually using this motherboard for all our memory reviews, since in our opinion it's be best choice for this job. Last but definitely not least, the board is capable of setting excellent timings on PSC memory, which makes it piece of cake to run PSCs at 2800 with CL6. |
- Sheer amount of
options - CPU Overclocking - Memory Overclocking |
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| Recommendation |
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| Should you be looking for a high-end overclocking motherboard, then the ASUS Z97 Maximus VII Formula is a great choice. There is only the price, which is quite high with more than 280 Euro. | -
Enthusiast - Gaming - Extreme Overclocking |
- Price | |
| Rating | |||
| We give the ASUS Maximus VII Formula very good 4.5 out of 5 stars. | |||
Author: m.buechel@ocaholic.ch
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