Finals Words and conclusion
Finals Words and conclusion
Nice, very nice... One of the more powerful Intel chipsets with the most powerful Intel processor series all have been merged onto a small 24x24cm mATX motherboard (this form factor fits perfectly in any chassis of course). The combination of the two together with the ROG GENE build are incredible.
Say you wanted to build a tiny small carry around LAN party box... well that's where this puppy comes into play. You can easily fit two graphics cards on there, have all the latest features and then get a serious level of overclocking features fired off at you. We have never been able to get our processor over 4.8 GHz, and the Maximum IV Gene-Z was able to manage exactly that to 4.9 GHz. It's a tiny detail I know, but it is also testimony to the build quality of this product.
And once you enter the EFI based BIOS... well .. your eyes will get a little wet, as far as I am concerned ASUS has got the best EFI/uEFI BIOS implementation ever. Even flashing firmware in there is a fun thing to do and watch -- which we did :)
Aesthetically the Gene-Z is a nice looking motherboard, the heatsinks could use a little update though into something more stylish like the Rampage III Extreme series show, that's pretty much the only negative I can think of though.
The new Intel Smart Response Technology (only available on Z68 motherboards) is something interesting but we feel will be very limited to a small group of enthusiast users that understand and know what they need to do before getting it setup properly. The idea is simple, use an SSD to cache the most used data of the operating system HDD. The downside here is a fairly complicated setup and an investment of an SSD. And though we feel once you purchase an SSD you will not want to compromise with the HDD injected into that core data, it might end up as a sound solution. The performance increases are impressive none the less and combined with a small cheap SSD, this might be an excellent alternative for the budget minded that dream of SSD performance.
So yeah, the end result is a motherboard with massive overclockability, above average baseline performance and the industry's best EFI BIOS implementation. About the higher then average baseline performance... we think ASUS locks the Turbo at 3.8 GHz per core on all cores (at least on our review sample) and as such the baseline performance is higher then normal, especially compared towards the competition. It's a small little trick, but hey why not. See it as a default small overclock straight out of the box.
Then features -- The Gene-Z is packed with features including SATA 6G ports, USB 3.0, four DIMM sockets (remember we are talking about a small mATX mobo here), two PCI Express x1 slots, one PCI Express x4 slot. Don't expect surprises for multi-GPU support, since the Z68 chipset is identical to the P67 in this respect - just a pair of discrete graphics cards are supported in a x8/x8 configuration.
Anyway, long story short, I really like the Maximus IV GENE-Z. It has 98% of the features of a normal sized ATX motherboard but compensates with excellent overclock potential and niche features like that scrumptious uEFI BIOS. However trust to be told, if you are not interested in Hybrid SSD caching (Intel SRT) or the Virtu mode... then a P67 motherboard might be a cheaper alternative really. Luckily for you ASUS has got a massive lineup available there as well. Dare we do it... yep... a top pick award. We can't help but loving this motherboard, the Gene-Z is genious.
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