ASUS Republic of Gamers Announces the Maximus VII Formula

Looks like my Sabertooth minus the funky heatsinks Z97 Mark one I suppose this one will be the top tire motherboard for ASUS.

It's too bad that M.2 slot is pretty much useless where it is, and this is more expensive than the Z97-WS, which has many of the same features plus a PLX bridge to give more usable expansion slots and an actually usable M.2 slot.

It doesn't look like it's radically changed though from the Z87 Maximus Formula too much.

I'd rather get the Z97-WS.

- 8x IR3550s (versus the inferior NextFets on this board)
- M.2 is in a more useful position
- PLX chip is available on the WS version

Overall the Asus WS is probably a better board. I guess the metal backplate on the Formula is kind of cool though.

I've been waiting for this board for a few weeks now. It would be great if their announcement actually meant you could buy the board somewhere. My only gripe with the board is the pcie 2.0 x4 slot. I wish there were a way to reallocate lanes from slots and devices I'll never use.

I plan on dropping a P3500 in there once its released and the bandwidth might not be up to snuff. I figure max seq. read may take a hit and I'm sure something else but that's a question for another thread perhaps.

I was going to use this board in new build but meh. It's probably going to be up for preorder next week. I'm glad I just went with the Hero, though. The VRM block is ugly on these, imo. The armor is nice aesthetically perhaps, but it's a little hard to know how it will suit your build until you have it in front of you.

Hero doesn't have a block at all, but the M6G (gene) EK block works on it if you want to get rid of the "Hero" badge. Aside from that badge I think the M7H is perhaps the best looking motherboard I've ever seen. The ROG emblem is quite nice... there's something primal about it--what is it anyway, a fish? And on the Hero, the ROG logo glows very nicely on the chipset heatsink. Particularly during sleep/power down, the logo pulses and it's gorgeous.

One thing that the M7H and M7F have in common is that they are both *completely* red/black for the first time. The 6th gen Maximus boards have some white in there. The clips for the RAM chips and PCIE slots have been replaced with properly colored plastic on the new edition.

So...it's got lots of marketing bullshit bolted on to it because X99 is still not out and they need to move enthusiast boards...got it.

^^Bingo

ASUS is awesome, you guys stop hating on them.

Still no word as to what the port housing is made out of, though higher res photos on Anand would lead me to believe it's a piece of threaded nylon as the cast lines are all over the place and the threads look a bit rough.

I wish ASUS PR would just answer shit instead of repeating 'it has a copper core insert' when asked what that port cover is made out of.