Product Showcase

Product Showcase

The ASUS motherboard follows a standard ATX form factor (30.5 x 24.4 cm). The motherboard is located in the high-end range of the Skylake and Kaby Lake desktop processor product stack. 

The Maximus IX Herooffers enough features to keep you satisfied. It has that familiar ROG look and feel, shields everywhere as well two  M2 slots. There is some LED RGB activity available, but all was kept subtle under that rear IO shiled and chipset ROG logo. Next to that, great looks with a subtle dark feel.

Included with the motherboard are the regulars including; manuals, driver CDs, SATA cables and a rear I/O plate. It also has a couple of new features which we'll talk about in-depth in this review. 

 

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• CPU support: Skylake / Kaby Lake class Intel Core processors
• Chipset: Intel Z270 Chipset
• 1x Gigabit: Ethernet Intel Gbe I219-V
• Storage: 
  • 2 x M.2 Socket connectors (Optane supported) 
  • 6 x SATA 6Gb/s connectors 
• Connectivity: 
  • 3x PCI-E 3.0 x16  (single at x16 / dual at x8 / triple at x8 - x8 - x4)
  • 3x PCI-E 3.0 x1
• USB 3.0 / 3.1 
• 8-channel ALC S1220 Realtek chip

The I/O back panel reveals a combo of 3.1/3.0/2.0 ports. The audio unit has special noise reducing capacitors and shielding sitting next to that Realtek chip. You will spot one 10/100/1000 Gigabit Ethernet jack. Missing however is a PS/2 keyboard/mouse combo port. Audio wise we spot a optical S/PDIF out port and five audio jacks. If you plan to use the integrated IGP of the processor, you can make use of one HDMI DisplayPort connector. The rear connectivity back-panel is loaded full, nice.
  

Included in the bundle is one interesting looking motherboard and gear like SATA cables, extra connectors and so on. What this motherboard misses however is WIFI, a bit of a miss if you ask me.

The board has 3 x physical PCIe 3.0 x16 slots which can be arranged in these slot configurations with graphics cards:

• 1-way mode - x16 / x0 / x0 
• 2-way mode - x8 / x8 / x0
• 3-way mode - x8 / x8 / x4

As you can see, these are PCI Express Gen 3.0 configurations, that's plenty for regular graphics card setups up-to 2-way SLI/Crossfire. The motherboard comes with one 8-pin power connector. You'll get four DIMM slots that can be used for up-to 64 GB of dual-channel memory up-to even 4133 MHz supported in OC mode. We'll actually test 3,867 MHz(!) as we use a new 3,866 MHz Trident Z kit from G.Skill which we'll feature in detail in this review.

Back Panel I/O Ports

• 1 x DisplayPort
• 1 x HDMI
• 1 x LAN (RJ45) port(s)
• 1 x USB 3.1 (black)Type-A
• 1 x USB 3.1 (red)Type-C
• 4 x USB 3.0 (blue) 
• 4 x USB 2.0 
• 1 x Optical S/PDIF out
• 5 x Audio jack(s)
• 1 x Clear CMOS button(s)
• 2 x Wi-Fi antenna port(s)
• 1 x USB BIOS Flashback Button(s)