ASUS Maximus Formula Motherboard Review :: ASUS Maximus Formula Layout

ASUS put a lot of thought into the layout of this board. The CPU area has a row of capacitors on the top and on the right hand side of the Socket. The MOSFETs are on the side of the capacitors. No issues with installation of an after-market cooling solution should be found as there’s plenty of clearance between the Socket and the heatsink surrounding the Socket.

CPU area

rear heatsink

Passive Cooling

Heatsink

Heatpipe

The layout is dominated by the ASUS passive cooling system. There is a Republic Of Gamer’s logo on the SouthBridge with a heatpipe leading out to the Northbridge heatsink. From there, there is three more heatsinks dissipating the heat from the NB and SB. The heatpipe is low profile and won’t interfere with any device installations.

8-pin power

Marvell controllers

The 8-pin power connector is on the top right hand side of the board, next to the PWR Fan header. The positioning is the perfect place as it lies nearest where the PSU will snake out to provide unobstructed access to the connection. The 24-pin power connector is on the bottom right hand side of the board, next to the FDD connector.

ASUS outfits this board with a Power and a Reset button to provide out of the box installation help. I always start off with First boot of a video card, the memory and the CPU connected to see if the computer will boot past POST. The buttons allows me to do this without installing the motherboard inside a case (a motherboard box does nicely for this purpose).