ASUS Maximus II Gene Motherboard Review :: Layout

The motherboard is a micro-ATX form factor motherboard. The CPU Socket is clear of obstacles with a row of solid capacitors on the top and left hand side of the Socket. The LGA-775 socket is surrounded by a heatsink with a heat pipe leading to the ROG logo and Northbridge. The Southbridge is covered by a small heatsink as well. This should keep the board running very cool.

There are four DIMM slots on the board below the CPU Socket. These can take up to 16GB of DDR2-1300MHz memory. The vast majority of motherboards on the market today use DDR3 memory but DDR2 memory is still available and inexpensive. ASUS is touting the ability of their board to take any memory with a simple push of the button all that is needed to patch memory issues. Not a bad idea at all.

There are two PCI Express x16 Generation 2.0 slots on the board to support CrossfireX with two ATI video cards. Crossfire is ATI's multi-GPU solution that works best with two video cards that are the same chip, such as two HD 4770s or two 4890s. Expansion on the board besides the PCI Express x16 slots consists of a single PCI Express x1 slot and a single PCI slot. Installing two dual-slot video cards will block the adjacent slot. Small factor boards usually are not much when it comes to running two high-end cards at the same time.

The 24-pin power connector is on the bottom right hand side of the board. The 8-pin power connector is on top of the CPU Socket, making for good wire management from the PSU to the motherboard. The FP IO is on the bottom left of the board followed by a Power and Reset button, two USB 2.0 headers, GP header, the BIOS chip, a 4-pin fan header, the Firewire and the Audio headers.

The battery is on the bottom right of the board followed by the 24-pin power connector, the IDE connector, and six sideways facing SATA ports, which makes connection easier to hookup in many cases. The External SATA port is next to the sideways facing ports. Note that the positioning of the SATA ports allows the user to install long ATI video cards into the PCI Express slots without the fear of overlapping cables becoming an issue.

Onboard sound on the ASUS Maximus II Gene board is provided by a SupremeFX X-Fi CODEC on the board. SupremeFX X-Fi sound card has full support for Intel's High Definition Audio standard and supports EAX Advanced HD 4.0 which is not supported by non-Creative Labs sound cards. CMSS 3D, X-Fi Crystalizer and Creative's Alchemy are also supported by the sound card.

The rear IO on the board consists of an External SATA port, a S/PDIF Out (Optical) port, a IEEE1394a port, a RJ45 jack, 6 USB 2.0/1.1 ports, the 8-channel audio jacks and a single PS/2 Keyboard port. The total USB supported by this board is 12 if you have brackets to support them. PS/2 mice are few and far between in this age of wireless and USB mice. There are a lot of PS/2 keyboards still in use and this could make the difference from just plugging in and going or going out to buy another USB keyboard if you still have your old school one just lying around and wan to keep using it.