Layout

At a first glance the ASUS Maximus VII 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 upwards facing 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 great. On the backside of the Maximus VII there is a plate made from SECC steel, which provides the board with great stiffness. Overall, when you take this board in your hands, it feels excellently built.


The ASUS Maximus VII Formula comes with a digital 8+2 phase power design. The CPU gets eight phases and the memory gets 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. Furthermore there are 10K Black Metallic Capacitors, which have an average life span of 10'000 hours. In other words, the Maximus VII Formula received the same power design, which can also be found on the ASUS ROG Maximus VII Hero and Gene motherboards.

On the Maximus VII 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 VII series motherboards. Additionally, the steelplate on the backside of the motherboard also acts as a heatsink.

Totally you'll find four DIMM-slots on the Maximus VII Formula. Officially supported are DDR3 3300(O.C.) / 3200(O.C.) / 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.

Page 1 - Introduction	Page 14 - SiSoft Sandra 2
Page 2 - Specs and Delivery	Page 15 - UC Bench
Page 3 - Features	Page 16 - Super Pi 1M / 32M
Page 4 - Layout	Page 17 - wPrime 1024M Multi Core
Page 5 - Connectors and I/O	Page 18 - Cinebench
Page 6 - BIOS	Page 19 - Bioshock: Infinite
Page 7 - Test setup	Page 20 - Metro Last Light
Page 8 - Preview / Gallery	Page 21 - Sleeping Dogs
Page 9 - 3D Mark	Page 22 - Power Consumption
Page 10 - 3D Mark 11	Page 23 - Performance Rating
Page 11 - 3D Mark Vantage	Page 24 - Price Comparison
Page 12 - PC Mark 7	Page 25 - Conclusion
Page 13 - SiSoft Sandra 1