An area that most will be interested in is the PCI Express section. Here there is 2 x PCIe 3.0/2.0 x16 (x16 or dual x8, red) and 1 x PCIe 2.0 x4 (black). The top PCI-E 3.0 slot is x16 whilst the lower slot is x8 so if you are going to be using a single graphics card then it’s advisable to use the top slot whilst using a dual card configuration will this will drop to x8. It’s also worth mentioning that NVIDIA SLI and AMD Crossfire are both supported on this motherboard.



The eagle eyed amongst you will have noticed the onboard power buttons right from the start. These are positioned at the very bottom of the motherboard and are extremely useful if you are going to be making use of a system that is outside of a computer chassis – it means you do not have to hook up computer chassis power/reset buttons.



Lastly the rear IO ports. For a mATX motherboard ASUS have certainly packed in a decent assortment of features here. From left to right we have:

• Clear CMOS button
• Mini PCI-E (See ASUS Maximus V GENE video for more details
• ROG connect button
• 4x USB 2.0 (3x black 1x white – used for ROG connect cable)
• eSATA (3Gb/s) port
• 2x USB 3.0 ports
• Optical S/PDIF
• HDMI/Display port
• Gigabit LAN (RJ45)
• 2x USB 3.0 ports
• 8 channel audio (via SupremeFXIII)

The audio jacks as mentioned are supported via the SupremeFX chip. This is located in the bottom corner of the board and is now within its 3rd generation – ASUS have included software to work in conjunction with this chip to supply an enhanced audio experience.

What ASUS say about SupremeFX III