Asus ROG Maximus V Gene Z77 w/ Intel i7 3770K Review

1. Introduction2. Intel i7 3770k3. Asus ROG Maximus V Gene Z774. Asus ROG Maximus V Gene Z77 (Super High Res Gallery)5. Bios and Overclocking6. Testing Methodology7. Synthetic: PCMark 78. Synthetic: 3DMark Vantage9. Synthetic: 3DMark 1110. Synthetic: Unigine Heaven Benchmark11. Synthetic: SiSoft Sandra 201112. Synthetic: Cinebench R11.5 64 bit13. Synthetic: SSD Performance14. Real World: 3D Rendering15. Real World: Media Encoding16. Real World: HandBrake 9.517. Gaming: Resident Evil 5 (HD4000)18. Gaming: Far Cry 2 (HD4000)19. Gaming: Total War Shogun 2 (HD4000)20. Gaming: F1 2011 (HD4000)21. Power Consumption22. Closing Thoughts23. View All Pages

The Asus ROG Maximus V Gene Z77 follows the traditional Republic Of Gamers colour scheme, with the logo clearly visible on the front of the box.

The box is a gatefold design, opening up to highlight some of the selling points to a potential customer browsing in the store.

The bundle includes:

• User's manual
• I/O Shield
• 2 x SATA 3Gb/s cable(s)
• 4 x SATA 6Gb/s cable(s)
• 1 x SLI bridge(s)
• 1 x Q-connector(s) (2 in 1)
• 1 x ROG Connect cable(s)
• 1 x 12 in 1 ROG Cable Label(s)
• 1 x ROG Door Hanger(s)

The ROG Maximus V Gene Z77 scores points for appearance, we love the black overall scheme and heatsinks, with red slots. Dramatic, yet menacing.

The Micro ATX board measures 24.4 cm x 24.4 cm, ideal for small form factor chassis designs.

Two passively cooled, black heatsinks cool the VRM's, and they are connected together via a thick heatpipe. There are several 4 pin fan headers conveniently located in this area for connection of multiple CPU heatsink fans.

The ROG Maximus V Gene Z77 has four memory slots, dual channel and colour coded black and red.  The board can support a maximum of 32GB of DDR3 memory at DDR3 2800(O.C.)/2666(O.C.)/2600(O.C.)/2400(O.C.)/2200(O.C.)/2133(O.C.)/2000(O.C.)/1866(O.C.)/1600/1333 MHz speeds. It supports non ECC, unbuffered memory with full support for the Intel Extreme Memory Profile system.

Underneath the slots is a ‘GO' button.  This can double up as a MEM OK button to troubleshooting memory posting issues, or to enable temporary overclocking when in the operating system. A front panel USB 3.0 header is also positioned close by.

There are six SATA ports on the board. The top two black SATA slots are controlled by the Intel Z77 chipset and are SATA 3 Gb/s rated. The middle two, red ports are also controlled by the Intel Z77 chipset but they are SATA 6 Gb/s rated. The bottom two red ports (far left in image above) are controlled by the ASMedia Z77 controller and are also SATA 6 Gb/s rated.

The Intel Z77 chipset supports Raid 0, 1, 5 and 10 configurations. Next to these is the Debug LED panel which is useful for troubleshooting any problems. Underneath is the main system panel connector.

Along the bottom of the board are easy to access power and reset buttons and two USB 2.0 connectors.

The board has two PCI Express 3.0/2.0 slots (both red) which work at x16 in single mode, or dual x8/x8. There is also a single PCI Express 2.0 slot which works at x4, this is black. Lastly there is also a single mini PCI Express 2.0 x1 slot on the mPCIe Combo expansion card.

The rear I/O panel supports:

• 1 x DisplayPort
• 1 x HDMI
• 1 x eSATA 3Gb/s
• 1 x LAN (RJ45) port(s)
• 4 x USB 3.0
• 4 x USB 2.0 (one port can be switched to ROG Connect)
• 1 x Optical S/PDIF out
• 6 x Audio jack(s)
• 1 x Clear CMOS button(s)
• 1 x ROG Connect On/ Off switch(es)

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