Board Layout

Depending on how big your screen is, scroll down and try not to think "holy **** that looks fantastic". It'll be hard not to, that's for sure.

In a departure from the original Republic of Gamer styling, the metallic aluminium fins, the strong lines and red highlights perfect the style Asus has been driving forward for years now. The basic board colours are the same as always - black white and blue, but the heatsink-heatpipe array is a stroke of genius. It looks fantastic and on its own feels incredibly meaty should you take it off. For those who remember the Striker Extreme's excessive heatpipes, you will no doubt agree that this is a massively refined product.

While the large finned middle section does cool some additional components, the large flat base with the Maximus II Formula logo stamped along the top, doesn't. There's no need for a CrossLinx chip like there was with the Intel P35 Blitz, the large expanse of aluminium between the PCI-Express slots does still houses a heatpipe and the finned aluminium adds an additional bit of surface area for heat exchange.


It doesn't stop there though - both a section of the northbridge heatsink and PWM heatsink can be removed and replaced with other coolers if you feel the need. Both get a liberal helping of thermal paste and screw holes to use for waterblocks for example, that's the idea anyway, but whether anyone will actually use it is another question. The screw holes are pretty small and could use being bolt holes, and finding waterblocks to fit into the small, recessed space on top of the northbridge heatsink could prove difficult.


We understand why Asus did this though - including a Fusion block was confusing for some who maybe didn't buy previous RoG boards because they didn't realise watercooling was optional and the Fusion block was a large percentage of the total cost pushing the price up for a feature very few people used. In that respect, Asus has made the right decision but there are still improvements that could be made.