Layout

At a first glance the ASUS Maximus VII Hero looks very good with its harmonic design. Once again the ROG-colors - red, black and white - suite nicely and together with the black PCB, it becomes a beautiful product. The layout itself is well thought and there is, for example, plenty of space around the CPU socket to install even largest CPU coolers available today. The fact that there are SATA connector which have been angled by 90 degrees allow an easy installation of oversized graphics cards.



The ASUS Maximus VII Hero comes with a digital 8+2 phase power design. The CPU gets eight phases and the memory gets a stable current supply from two individual phases. Furthermore, ASUS equipped this motherboard with their so called "Black Metallic Chokes", which can cope with up to 60A per phase and can resist temperatures ranging from -70°C to +125°C. This makes the power desing even better for extreme overclocking where extremely low temperatures around the CPU socket can be reached.



In total, you will find four DIMM-slots on the Maximus VII Hero. Officially supported are DDR3 3200(O.C.) / 3100(O.C.) / 3000(O.C.) / 2933(O.C.) / 2800(O.C.) / 2666(O.C.) / 2600(O.C.) / 2500(O.C.) / 2400(O.C.) / 2200(O.C.) / 2133(O.C.) / 2000(O.C.) / 1866(O.C.) / 1800(O.C.) / 1600 / 1333 MHz. There is enough space between the DIMM-slots and the CPU socket which means that you will not encounter any compatibility problems with big coolers even when you choose to install RAM modules with big heatspreaders. Also supported are version 1.3 Xtreme Memory Profiles (XMP).



On the Maximus VII Hero the southbridge is being cooled by a passive cooling block. A closer look at the area where the power VRMs are shows that there are two additional heatsinks, which have been connected via heatpipe. If you are familiar with more expensive overclocking motherboards from ASUS, you know that it often features PLX bridge chip. In order to achieve a lower price point ASUS did not equip this board with such a chip.

Page 1 - Introduction	Page 14 - SiSoft Sandra 2
Page 2 - Specs and Delivery	Page 15 - UC Bench
Page 3 - Features	Page 16 - Super Pi 1M / 32M
Page 4 - Layout	Page 17 - wPrime 1024M Multi Core
Page 5 - Connectors and I/O	Page 18 - Cinebench
Page 6 - BIOS	Page 19 - Bioshock: Infinite
Page 7 - Test setup	Page 20 - Metro Last Light
Page 8 - Preview / Gallery	Page 21 - Sleeping Dogs
Page 9 - 3D Mark	Page 22 - Power Consumption
Page 10 - 3D Mark 11	Page 23 - Performance Rating
Page 11 - 3D Mark Vantage	Page 24 - Price Comparison
Page 12 - PC Mark 7	Page 25 - Conclusion
Page 13 - SiSoft Sandra 1