Overview of the ASUS Maximus VII Formula

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• SATA Cables
• WiFi Dual in one Antennae
• Qconnect front panel connectors
• IO Shield
• SLI Ribbon Cable
• ROG Door Hanger
• Cable labeling Stickers
• Installation disc
• Owners Manual
• WiFi AC/BT 4.0 combo card with M.2 (NGFF) Port
• Watch Dogs Game Code Card

The accessories here are more than enough to get going and as you can see we test fit our 2280 drive and while it mounts into the combo card when fitting it to the board it simply cannot go into place as it hits the VRM cooler.

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The VRM uses a 8+4 pin CPU ATX power connectors to ensure plenty of power is available even under the most strenuous loads or heavy overclocks the board may see.

The VRM employs the new Extreme Engine Digi+ III components which we discussed before but as you can see it utilizes specially selected components to feed your critical components. First up and the most visible change   would be the BlackWing Chokes which have a very unique finned design. Also the black color caps make them much less noticeable when placed on the black PCB and the NexFET MOSFETs which are rated at over 90% efficiency during normal loading which means better power efficiency and less thermal dump.

The CrossChill cooler can be seen internally and you can see the copper color from the new Copper coldplate design which should help with better heat dissipation.

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Here is the upper overclocker corner and much like the Maximus VI Formula it is much cleaner as alot of the extreme overclocking tools has been moved to the optional accessory OC Panel tool which allows for more focused components on the main board PCB. Up top you find the MemOK button along with lighted power and Reset buttons and lets not forget the two digit LCD poster.

The lower left hand edge houses the audio solution which on the Formula is the newest SupremeFX solution which is in place to offer very high end audio solution including choice audio capacitors and components to ensure it meets the enthusiasts gamers needs.

The bottom edge of the board is what takes the Formula to the extreme with the ROG EXT header designed to allow the OC Panel to be plugged directly into the board and full OCPanel functionality including SubZero Sense and VGA hotwire functionality from the Formula board. This is a major plus as previously you had to have the extreme board to get such functionality, but now with the introduction of the OC Panel and ROG board on the 8 series can run these features with the separate purchase of the OC Panel. Also you will see a soundstage button at the lower edge which allows for manual changing of sound modes through the high end audio solution and adds a bit better depth to the functionality of the Formula board.

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Here you can see the Massive backplate for the ROG Armor, and it looks really good along with providing some nice protection to the PCB keeping things like standoffs or something from chipping off sensitive SMD components should the board be dropped in or mis aligned by accident.

Software Overview

AISuiteIII

ASUS has completely redesigned the AISuite Software with the AISuite III software. A completely new user interface is now available and with that comes a much smoother function.

Here you can see that the AISuite now has a newer look like the UEFI we saw and the function is well laid out in easy to use menus just be sure to notice some of the corner arrows and other things as I found myself suddenly realizing there was another menu in a section due to some separate menu options not jumping out at you letting you know it was there.

Mem TweakIt

 Mem TweakIt is a great program for extreme overclockers or tweakers as it allows real time adjustment and tweaking of the memory for the system which can make the difference between a high point run and a world record run.

BIOS Overview

The BIOS of the ASUS Z97’s still carries the same fluidity that the Z77 and Z68’s carried but with a newer look as ASUS has done very well on the overall UEFU/I code which means the only think they have really needed to add was updates based on features or tuning of the board. Well all of that aside ASUS did add some very interesting features which we think will help some users especially those who like to tweak their boards and try to squeeze a bit more performance from them. The ability to  take notes within the BIOS is very cool although I am old school and always keep pen and paper near by, we guess you could call this a “Green” alternative as you take notes on adjustments, although I would still keep a paper backup of any notes or at least a screenshot (F12) of the notes before flashing the BIOS as a bios update that goes deep enough could clear those notes and they would be gone forever.

Another neat feature would be the Last modified section which basically just logs any changes you made in the BIOS so that if you run into an issue you can go back and look at what your changes were all dated and with a timestamp so that you can revert changes and test again without starting over. This is a interesting feature and I am not saying everyone will use it but well for the target audience of this board (Extreme enthusiasts and overclockers) we think it could ultimately be very useful.

Another cool addition is the my favorites page which allows you to earmark certain settings within the bios to be placed on this page where you can go to and have access to your most commonly used settings without having to go through all of the other settings as there are quite a lot on this board.

As we have seen before the BIOS has a huge amount of memory presets for the optimal tuning pre-configured form the ROG engineers so that when overclocking you can get the absolute best or at least a great starting point on tuning your memory.