ASUS Maximus III GENE Micro ATX Intel Motherboard

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The layout is fantastic. I've installed pretty a lot anything at all I wanted with no troubles ever. It's allowed me to overclock my CPU from the stock two.66 to 4. by adjusting the the internal clock speed to 200Mhz.Has by no means crashed on me, never ever given a single hick up regardless of how considerably I've pushed it. Nothing at all, actually. I have this is a Antec Mini P-180 casei5 750 @ 4.0Ghz8GB of DDR3 1333 @ 1600MhzAMD Radeon 6950 unlocked to a 69702 Essential C300 64GB SSDs in a raid-1TB Western Digital Blue drive for storage650 Watt XFX Modular PSUCOOLER MASTER Hyper N 520This system was designed to trans-code movies and for heavy gaming. I love this setup. It will run fairly substantially anything at all I want.

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if your going for a initial create gaming computer this is a fantastic acquire. its not so high priced and has all the slots i needed to make my very first build super quickly. operating 64 bit windows 7 on it. performs great none

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Built program with 2 sata drives, sata DVD, 8GB and Win7. Had no difficulties with install. Was capable to overclock cpu from two.6 to 3.2 Ghz with no other alterations than clock multipler. Big number of USP ports. Newegg has a poor selection of 1156 heatsinks, the "universal" ones suck. Just get the added RAM, you'll want it later.

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Great Mobo. Has everything I want except for... A bios revision that will deal with my processor and 2 PCI-E slots that can run at x16 at the identical time Asus tech help is pretty lousy. Extended wait time and was much more interested in getting me off the telephone then trying to help me out.

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- Amazing array of internal connectors: 5 fan headers, three USB, 1394, temp sensors, committed e-Sata, and so on., and so on.- External clear CMOS button a nice touch- Two PCIe-16 at 8Ǟ tough to come across in an mATX board.- "Mem OK" feature seems to operate for unqualified ram- Enjoy the video card retention clips--so much much better than the "push-pin" type. - As other individuals have noted, the memory QVL on the Asus site is an embarassment: virtually absolutely nothing on the list is currently available, and no 4 gb chips at all are listed. So it's hit or miss with RAM option. Challenging to fathom from a business like Asus.- The single-sided locks on the memory slots are hateful - Not a fan of their Q-Fan bios controls (no pun intended). Not in a position to precisely set a target temp and range of fan speeds (%) as in MSI boards for example.- Speedfan software program does not seem to operate with this board at all, unless there's some thing I've missed?? - Took a chance and employed 2 x 2gb of Corsair XMS3 1600 memory--installed in the red slots. At very first, bios saw it as 1333, but setting it manually in Mem OK to 1600 allowed board to see it appropriately, which includes dual channel mode and appropriate timings. Hope I'm as lucky when I go to install one more 4gb in the black slots...- Considering that I only wanted a mild overclock on an i750, I decided to try the auto functions. First I tried the Asus O.C. software program utility within Windows and it generally did nothing. Then I tried the Auto O.C. function inside the bios and it gave me a good (for my purposes) 3.1 overclock with Turbo-mode enabled, ram at 1725.- So all in all a excellent board. But I have to remove 1 egg for the silly memory problems and the fan speed controls.- Personally, the other P55 board I personal by MSI presented me with far fewer troubles and far more intuitive bios controls in various locations (particularly fan controls). If they produced an mATX board with PCIe at 8Ǟ I would have gone with them.

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SLI and X-fire capable, Very good sound, lots of added onboard LEDs and buttons to play with and amaze your buddies . O/C choices abound. Good placement of connectors on the board. Stable so far with Windows 7 -x64. Straightforward to run RAM at specified speed, choose speed in BIOS and let her go. Lots of functions I will probably never ever use. Simple RAID setup. Not really something I can assume of, a little spendy but if you want quality stuff you got to throw down. Necessary BIOS update. Had a tiny trouble recognizing usb devices, updated to present BIOS which did the trick. Automatically set my RAM to 1333, but like I mentioned above, just tweak it in the BIOS. Paired this with I7 860, four gig of G. Skill DDR3 1600 ripjaw , Sapphire 4870, and 2 Raptors in RAID . Stuffed it all in a Silverstone Sugo for a sweet tiny LAN box.

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1st off looks great, goes really well with my case. For a MicroATX board it has wonderful efficiency and the built in XFi sounds great and is undoubtedly a plus! Also has a ton of USB ports and other connectability, ect. Hmm, no cons genuinely other than the placement of the RAM slots isn't specifically excellent for my case, but I made it perform :pYeah.. can't complain.

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I've been following the reviews on this board for a handful of months now. Seems like several of the concerns people have had have been connected to RAM. Appears like the board may have trouble operating at DDR-1600, in particular if you're not picking from the QVL. XMP also seems to be a problem if you run it outside of the red slots.In spite of not being on the QVL, I wanted to run 2 sticks of 4GB, which I guess are also new to seem on the QVL. I chanced it and went with 8GB ƒ sticks of 4GB) of g.skill DDR-1333 model F3-10666CL9D-8GBRL running at spec 9-9-9-24-2N 1.5v. Ran every stick in the A1 slot (middle red) via MemTest86+ all the way via, then ran them with each other in the red slots all night. 8 hours and 7 full tests later, memtest reported zero errors.1 of the major reasons I purchased this card was because it runs a PCI-E graphics card in full x16 mode. Not preparing on running SLI. So far I have not encountered any instability, crashes, or glitches in my games or in Windo Price tag dropped ฤ a handful of days right after I ordered it.ASUS QVL is annoyingly out of date. Creative X-FI scenario is weird. I downloaded the Via drivers from ASUS's Maximus Gene III page (http://usa.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=YwO7uzOlu1js0TqM&templeteɤ) but did not mess with the X-FI at all. I just use a two speaker setup so I am happy with it. COOLER MASTER Elite 341 RC-341C-KKN1-GPASUS Maximus III GENEIntel Core i7-8708GB G.Skill F3-10666CL9D-8GBRLEVGA 012-P3-1470-AR GeForce GTX 470CORSAIR CMPSU-650HXSAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 HD103SJASUS DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS Black SATA 24X DVD BurnerTP-LINK TL-WN851NARCTIC COOLING MX-2 Thermal CompoundWindows 7 Household Premium 64 bit.

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Looks great!Recognized every thing proper away!Incredibly properly developed package. Defective ram slot at B1. Construct went gorgeous and smooth appropriate up to the point of installing Windows 7 and it began to BSOD. Following checking both drives for two days and testing the ram for a day every it has come down to a faulty ram slot...Will check back right after the RMA Faulty ram slot?...how do you develop a board of this top quality and place five cent ram slots on it..seriously.

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Built in XFi sounds excellent. ROG connect was beneficial to see what was going on through POST. Had two of the provided SATA cables (with latch) break although disconnecting from HDD. Removed remaining stuck piece with pliers. Was doing a lot of HDD rearrangement so they had been getting unplugged often.Takes longer than my old 4GB method to POST (ㅂ seconds) although undertaking "Detect Memory" according to ROG. Apparently deemed regular according to Asus forums depending on memory setup. Sugo SG03-F caseIntel i7 860 with Major Shuriken (covers 1 ram slotƢGB Corsair 1600 Mhz CMX8GX3M4A1600C9Sapphire Toxic 5850Intel 80GB SSD and WD Caviar Black 750GB

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This motherboard is amazing for the quantity of income you spend. Effectively worth the additional money than the other boards that are microatx. ROG connect is an amazing feature for overclocking. Really quick platform excellent for individuals who want microatx. I use this board in a SFF construct with a core i5. Brought that core i5 quickly up to 3.75ghz with ease. Sounds excellent from the onboard creative X-Fi sounds incredible. Ideal motherboard I have ever owned. You don't get the thermal probes. Have to be careful on the ram. Read the manual just before you buy to check. I utilized the G.Ability ripjaws DDR3 1333 2x2gb kit and that functions good! Somebody the points are in negative places, no IDE or Floppy. my specs.Silverstone SG-03Intel core i5 at three.5ghz at 1.25voltsCorsair H50G.Skill RIPJAWS DDR3 1333mhz500GB in RAID HD 5770

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Been a solid board with no issues. A lot of USB and SATA connectors. The on board audio is quite fantastic. Great energy management. Sleep and standby modes function wonderful. For the value at time of buy I feel this board really should have come with on board USB3. Good board that runs fantastic with quad core i-five.

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Lots of possibilities in the BIOS, great layout. Memory - If you strategy on using 8GB ram with this mobo, make Certainly specific you only obtain memory on the QVL from Asus. I got 8GB of 7-8-7-24 (x.m.p) DDR1600 G. Ability ripjaws. At first bootup 8GB was fine but immediately after a couple of restarts the BIOS only sees 4GB and I don't believe i can get it to operate at all. I will have to return the memory now and get stuff I ought to have. Technically my fault but there isn't a lot of warning about this in any critiques of this board. Graphics - The second PCIe slot is ONLY x8. It doesn't matter if you don't have anything in the 1st, it will only ever be x8 unless Asus can discover a way to fix this. The specs say "single x16, dual x8" when you are reading all the critiques online but it truly need to read "first slot x16 when utilized alone or x8 when second slot also in use, second slot only x8". I was hoping it would have actually been the way it was listed since who desires to cover up all the pcie slots with a dual slot graphics card. Sigh... Silverstone GD04i7 860ram still needs to be corrected (ONLY use the board with Asus QVL memory)OCZ 600 WattSapphire 5770 in second pcie x16 slot which ONLY runs at x8 no matter what.Intel G2 160GB SSDx2 WD 2TB caviar in raid 1.Took off an egg for the above difficulties which were hard to locate out about prior to the acquire.

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Nice board, effortless BIOS, operates great for 20-30 minutes at a time. Similar dilemma as numerous other reviewers. That X-Fi chip is nothing but difficulty. Crash immediately after crash soon after crash regardless of endless driver, BIOS, cooling, and so on updating and troubleshooting. Manufacturer Response:Dear Valued Consumer,We sincerely apologize for the issue that you are experiencing with the X-Fi chip. Please make contact with me at OC_Support@asus.com and reference case quantity NE0711 so I can get a lot more details about the difficulties you're having concerning the on-board audio. Please also contain the By way of audio driver version that you are at the moment working with and which driver versions you've attempted.Greatest Regards,ASUS Support Team

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Onboard X-Fi sound frees up a PCI slot, all mATX boards really should have this! The guy who wrote “be careful what RAM you acquire with this” duh, is there a motherboard that this is not true for! And yes you can place the video card in the lower PCI Express slot, they only switch to 8-channels when you install a second card (Intel chipset design not Asus), lol. There have been quite a few tests of this, and there are no actual performance disadvantages for the frequent user. Note that the Inventive software key is written on the paper sleeve that the driver CD comes in. No X-Fi sound till you activate the drivers with this crucial.OS: Windows-7Case: Silverstone TJ08-B (mATX)PSU: Corsair CMPSU-520HXProcessor: Intel Core i7-860Memory: Corsair XMS3 2 x 2GB DDR3 1600 (N82E16820145263)Video: ATI Radeon HD5850

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Wonderful to OC with: have hit 4.4GHz / 210 BLCK on this with out a hitch (run 200BLCK 24ǝ).*Access to 21x multi with Turbo disabled is EnormousEvery thing from accessories, functions, heck even the packaging is best shelf right here. One particular of the ideal boards I've had and it's mATX! There's actually not much else you could possibly ask of this board other than wishing it natively had USB three. / SATA 6gb/s (can get expansion card even though / combo deal). Kinda cheesed Sandy Bridge won't be for this in 2011, but 1156 isn't the only socket acquiring the shaft there...

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Modest, Efficient, Quickly, Cool searching, Good sound.Solid hardware. Lots of selections. Operates wonderful.The BIOS is very good though a bit slow to begin (I have 1202). The windows computer software is mediocre.Pc probe doesn't give you the Ghz, but proceeded to spread 20 icons on my desktop that I had to close 1 by 1. It also raised false alarms showing CPU Voltage at 65V! (don't use it if you have a heart condition)... CPU level up rebooted with out telling me what it was carrying out....The EPU engine changed the blk by +/- 5 Mhz though Windows7 massively downgraded the multiplier from x21 to x9 (i.e. creating it fairly substantially useless) Asus is no Apple... (which, I know, is why we are here). Installing creative SB X-FI software program initially wouldn't work based on the versions obtainable on Asus site... lastly they fixed it. Fairly high-priced. The sound is based on through VT2020 chip. X-FI appears to be some type of signal processing chip on leading of it. There is a through driver which works independently of x-fi, and then the x-fi computer software. I'm making use of G.SKILL Ripjaws F3-10666CL7D-4GBRH which does function nicely even though it wasn't on Asus list and I had to set the timings manually.Velocity Micro MX2-W Silver boxASUS Maximus III GENEi7 8604GB Ripjaws 1333 7-7-7-21Antec TruePower 550W

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This is one particular of those installations that actually had to go proper the 1st time. When you are putting a Hyper 212 on your CPU, 4 GB of heavy DDR3-2000, and a GTX 460, all of which have to be in to test. Well, the GENE came by way of! Booted up on the initially attempt. Has lots of functions for overclocking. Enjoyable lit logos and LEDs inside. My i5-760 is operating at 4.two GHz and my OCZ Reaper DDR3-2000 is running at 2000 MHz. All squeezed inside an APEX Micro-ATX case with handle. Can you say portable Starcraft II technique? Doesn't overclock all that properly unless you upgrade BIOS. At first, it would not read all of the memory profiles, forcing me to 7-7-7-20, or 8-8-8-24, sort of at its will. Definitely, this created it genuinely difficult to clock the memory appropriately. It would never engage my XMP profiles even when I chosen XMP overclocking mode. Upgrading the BIOS at least fixed it to where it selected timings based on the memory frequency setting. Got the 9-9-9-24 correct and now mem runs at 2000. Nevertheless won't engage XMP, but who cares if it can read the appropriate profile for 2000?- Only 1 eSATA port (I like 2 so I can copy eSATA arrays)- PCI-Express slots are too close together (can't SLI my Palits)- You lose a PCI-Express (rather than PCI) to a 2-slot graphics card- No SATA-6GB/s or USB-3 System:- APEX TX-381-C Case- Corsair HX-620 Modular Power Supply- This board- Intel Core i5-760 at four.2GHz- Coolermaster Hyper 212 employing a single fan- OCZ Reaper Edition DDR3-2000 2x2GB kit- Palit Sonic Edition GTX 460 1GB- OCZ Agility 2 90GB three.five" SSD- Fedora 13 XFCE

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For my level of expertise, or rather, lack there of, this board was a dream to perform with; completely. Every little thing about it has been remarkable, from lay-out, to compatibility, to any type of troubleshooting issues. The LED lights on the board and the manual are quite informative. The BIOS is a dream boat and I can just tell that this is going to be a stable rig on the motherboards behalf for rather a run. Two beefs.Beef A) The X-Fi 'sticker' seeking thing on the southeast end of the board looked like a sticker. I wanted to pull it off.Beef B) So, I watched the critiques on this item like a hawk for a excellent 3 months. Hasn't been an eventful three months but that's besides the point. Be really careful with the ram you chose, I ended up going with Patriot 2 x 2gb DDR3 'Sector 5' 1600mhz. They only function at in the red slots as confirmed by another reviewer. What takes place when they're in the black slot is.. Merely, the laptop or computer doesn't post, at all. Thankfully, 8GB's of ram will be overkill for my needs and simply because it's in the red slots, this provides me the chance to apply a decent aftermarket cooler but still inside reason. Just do your study, seriously. I very advise going with Asus's certified ram but I decided to be stubborn and go against it. i5 750 @ 2.662gb x two Patriot DDR3 'Sector five' 1600mhzWestern Digital Caviar Black 640gbSeasonic 650X GOLDSapphire 5850 1GBAntec P180 Mini

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I went from getting all sorts of hardware compatibility issues to having none. I have not even installed the disc to the motherboard but and its already operating a lot superior than my 790i evga board. I never checked to see if this board had IDE CD\DVD compatibility and identified out the difficult way that it takes SATA. I am not mad although, the dang IDE cable takes up way to substantially space anyway. A new SATA CD\DVD drive only expense me 25 bucks, properly worth getting a SATA, go SATA!!!

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I cant say sufficient excellent factors about this board. I has plenty of bios features. The packaging and accessories are the greatest I have ever observed come with a motherboard. The efficiency of the board exceeded my expectations. Quite pleased with my purchase. None I have this coupled with two GTX 460s in SLI, four gigs Crucial Balistix memory, and an I5-750. I can run any game I have on max.

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If all memory slots worked, I'd be thrilled. Looks to be a stellar board at a excellent price. Unfortunately, the B1 memory slot was defective and wouldn't boot with any memory in it. Tested with alternate memory, and that it was seated correctly. RMA replace with Newegg was wonderful, but the replacement had the precise similar dilemma! Then I located out that other folks here had the exact similar issue! Following 2x, I'm giving up on this mobo. Giving Asus 1 additional opportunity with the P7P55 pro, but if that doesn't function, I'm boycotting your items! Newegg RMA, on the other hand, was stellar. Manufacturer Response:Dear Valued Consumer,We sincerely apologize for the issue you are experiencing with this model motherboard. Please make contact with me at OC_Support@asus.com and reference case number NE0633 so that we might get additional particulars about your system configuration such as which CPU cooler you are using. Also, you can attempt pressing the red 'Go' button just before you power on the technique and continue pressing until the method completes POST to see if that helps.Ideal Regards,ASUS Support Team

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Its a nice motherboard like the BIOS REPUBLIC OF GAMERS Begin UP has a lot of features for over clocking. I got this board for the fact that it was in my price range I liked the specs and the reviews for it. So far its been fantastic runs anything I by means of at it with a core i7 and the video card was Asus Ati Radeon EAH5770 CU Core runs any game I can throw at it have 8 GB OF ram can put up to 16GB on this baby. I like it for now no problems. Only thing I can assume of is how the SATA connectors on the board face it was a discomfort connecting them but I have older type of case don't feel it would be a problem in a larger case that what I have but yeah I would suggest perhaps a full size case just to be in a position easily connect those SATA connectors. They will need to just put them faceing down inside they put them off to the side only con I discovered. Plus as it goes no USB three.O way want to wait for a even though because I'm certain two. is going to be a factor of the past. Overall although its good for the price had no concerns I like Asus stuff they make fantastic parts.

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Nice function setPerforms effectively (if you get a working unit)Nice layout Initially 1 was flakey, crashed at idleAsus tech support was terriblePoor documentation Asus tech assistance was a terrible black hole. I filled out the extensive types on their web site, and received one e-mail per 24 hrs.(from China?), even if I responded minutes soon after receiving a reply. I was asked to fill out an workplace doc which was 95% of the info I had already provided on their site, and in no way heard back from them. Black hole tech assistance from Asus. Newegg provided rapid and effective exchange.

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Properly constructed. Piping greater than average. Good layout None I couldn't be happier with the board. In typical Newegg fashion, all my parts arrived as promised...on time and in best condition. I put together a new program: This motherboard with an I7 2.93 unlocked Lynnfield, Seagate 1.5Tb HD, NVidia GE GTX 460 Video, 4Gb Ripjaws RAM, OCZ 700w supply, ArcticFreezer 7 Pro v.2 and I am posting this on my very first power-up following Windows 7 install. No issues....I'm content as hell.