Asus Maximus Formula Intel X38-based mobo

Maximus or minimus?

If you want to use the integrated audio Asus supplies a riser card that carries an ADI1988B chip along with six 3.5mm jack connections. It sits in an expansion slot above the top-most PCI slot, which in turn is above the primary graphics card. In the event you run dual graphics cards, the bottom-most PCI slot is likely to be out of commission, but the only card you’re likely to want to install is an X-Fi or Auzentech sound card.

The IDE and six SATA connectors are laid down to direct the cables away from your graphics card(s); the headers for more USB and Firewire ports are located where you have easy access; and the front panel headers are clearly labelled and conveniently located. The eight-pin ATX 12V connector is close to the I/O panel, but the latch faces towards the CPU and is easy to release.

An impeccable board layout

That’s all well and good, but Asus has gone the extra mile with some genuinely useful touches. So not only do you get Power and Reset buttons on board but they’re illuminated so there can be no mistake about what you’re pressing. There’s a pack of Asus Q-Connectors in the box that speeds up the business of connecting case headers, a bag of adaptors and clips for the water-cooling side of the Fusion hardware, as well as a gizmo called the LCD Poster.

That’s Post as in Power On Self Test. This digital clock-like gadget connects to a header on the board with a cable that feeds through the I/O bracket so it sits externally, probably on top of your case. If you hit a problem during the Post process, you don’t have to interpret a series of beep codes, but instead can read "DET DRAM" or "ONBD IO", which are abbreviated forms of 'Detect DRAM' and 'On Board I/O', in case you were wondering.

We tested the Asus with 2GB of OCZ PC2-9200 DDR 2 Reaper memory, a pair of PowerColor HD 2900 XT graphics cards and a Hitachi 7K1000 hard drive. For comparison, we used a Gigabyte X38T-DQ6 with 2GB of OCZ PC3-1600 DDR 3 memory.