Best 1155 bang-for-the-buck motherboard out there?

A Review On: ASUS Maximus IV Gene-Z - LGA 1155 - Z68 - Republic of Gamer Series - mATX Intel Z68 Micro ATX DDR3 2200 Motherboards

ASUS Maximus IV Gene-Z - LGA 1155 - Z68 - Republic of Gamer Series - mATX Intel Z68 Micro ATX DDR3 2200 Motherboards

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Amazon.com
Purchased on:
Price paid: $200.00
EditeD
Posted · 62 Views · 3 Comments

Pros: Flawless layout. Breeze to overclock. Lots of connectivity options. Supports 22nm CPU's. Very nice UEFI tools with various applications.

Cons: Bloatware on following CD that makes the PC unstable. A minor issue, but stick to regular drivers from Asus' website. None other.

Introduction
The Asus Maximus IV Gene-Z is a great contribution ti Asus' great line of ROG motherboards.

This board was a fresh breeze compared to e.g the larger P8P67/Z68 PRO versions from Asus. The UEFi interface is overhauled, which makes the fine tune of this motherboard a breeze, aswell as the boards design and layout wich I myself find very appealing.

Bundle
A very good manual is included. The manual is thick as a bible, and incredibly detailed in various languages. The bundle also comes prepacked with a batch of stickers ment to sort out your hard drive cables for easy maintaining and great overview. A ROG casebadge, as well as a huge side-panel sticker with the well known Republic of Gamers vector style graphics, is also included.

All the neccessary accessories is bundeles, such as I/O panel, Sata cables, SLi and a extra crossfire bridge is ofcourse included.

The only negative thing I find about this bundle, are the Driver+Apps DVD. The AI Suite makes the system freeze on load. My tip is to do all the prefered settings in the UEFI BIOS instead of installing the poorly designed software from Asus.

Motherboard
The layout is fantastic and incredibly tidy for a mATX board. With it, you could go all out with a crossfire or a SLi system, toss on a large cooler to cool your chip, aswell as running everything you would normally find on a regular sized ATX board without any problem at all.

No physical problems with the board at all, neither any hidden errors or random bluescreens.

Conclusion
The perfect LAN board, or simply the perfect board for anyone who would save some space on their desk, but still look for performance. thumb.gif

3 Comments

Well, I don't know where you looked, but I sure find myself on the list there
The REGULAR drivers are on the CD, Theres a seperate sections for software and one for DRIVERS, The only way your system will be unstable is if you installing Drivers you don't need, read what your installing. Also the free software is VERY USEFUL, A free paid version of DAEMON TOOLS PRO and I believe theres an anti virus in there as well both paid version given for free, which is worth it right there. As for the dirvers its always best to check teh web page but this board is so new now theres no point.