Layout

At a first glance the ASUS Maximus V 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. 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 connectors which have been angled by 90 degrees allow an easy installation of oversized graphics cards.

The ASUS Maximus V Formula comes with a digital 8+4+2 phase power design. The CPU gets eight phases, the iGPU can rely on four 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". These can resist temperatures ranging from -70°C to +125°C. This makes the power design even better for extreme overclocking where extremely low temperatures around the CPU socket can be reached or simply if you are living in Russia.

Totally you'll find four DIMM-slots on the Maximus V Formula. Officially supported are DDR3 2800 (OC), 2666 (OC), 2600(OC), 2400 (OC), 2200 (OC), 2133 (OC), 2000 (OC), 1866 (OC), 1600, 1333 and 1066 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 V Formula the southbridge as well as the current converters aren't connected via a heatpipe loop like it was the case on the Maximus V Extreme. Here they are separated and keeps almost the same design. Luckily there is no fan on any of the cooling blocks. Like we mentioned on our features page there is an additional water cooling chamber, that ASUS routed through the VRM coolers. Another neat little addition is the PLX8608 chip, situated between the two last PCI Express x16 slots. Using this chip ASUS is able to provide more USB 3.0 and more SATA 6 Gbps ports.