ASUS Maximus Formula Special Edition (Intel X38)
Expansion options
ASUS Maximus Formula uses the ICH9R south bridge with a radiator. Therefore, the board supports six SerialATA II ports and allows merging disks into RAID arrays of levels 0,1,5 and 10.
Besides, the motherboard supports one Parallel ATA line with an additional JMB368 controller made by JMicron.
Therefore, as many as 8 hard disks (6 SATA + 2 PATA) altogether can be plugged in to ASUS Maximus Formula. Then, the board offers 12 USB 2.0 ports: six on the rear panel, with 6 more plugged in with brackets (the board comes bundled with 1 bracket for 2 ports).
Besides, the motherboard supports the IEEE1394 ("Firewire"). For that, there is an additional onboard VT6308P controller made by VIA.
Therefore, the board offers support for 2 Firewire ports: one mounted on the rear panel, with the other one connected with a plate (available in the package bundle).
ASUS Maximus also offers 8-channel integrated Intel High Definition Audio, with AD1988B chip used as the codec. Remember that the audio subsystem is implemented on a separate board (available in the package bundle).
Now a few words on the network support: the board uses two high-speed Marvell 88E8056 (Gigabit Ethernet) network controllers connected to the PCI Express (x1) bus,
Both the RJ-45 connectors are brought over to the rear panel which has the following configuration:
Engineers at ASUS have completely given up support for the LPT and COM ports. Missing is also a PS/2 connector to plug in a mouse. On the other hand, USB 2.0 ports are in abundance; there is a Firewire, as well as an optical and coaxial SP-DIF outputs.
Traditionally, here is the diagram of components:
There are no jumpers on ASUS Maximus, and clearing the CMOS is done with a respective button (located on the rear panel). This button can be locked with a special switch:
Besides, ASUS Maximus uses buttons to power on the system and to reset:
Now on to the BIOS settings.
BIOS
The BIOS of ASUS Maximus is based on the AMI BIOS version, and its capacity is 16 Mbit.
All the memory settings are gathered in the overclocking tools section:
There is also a parameter that affects the performance - setting the memory operating frequency.
The choice of available frequencies is in direct dependence of the selected Strap:
There is one more parameter that affects the memory subsystem performance - "Command Rate":
Now move on to the section to do with the system monitoring.
The board displays the current temperatures for the CPU, system, and the chipset (both north and south bridges), rotational speeds of all the fans, as well as voltage levels. Besides, all the plugged in coolers can vary the rotational speeds depending on the CPU and system temperatures and on the temperatures of external thermal sensors. The respective settings are made in the Q-FAN 2 section:
You can keep track of the monitoring parameters from within Windows as well: with either AI Suite (basic set of parameters) or with PC Probe II (extended set).
The BIOS version can be updated in a number of ways. First, make use of the AFUDOS (DOS) and ASUS Update (Windows) utilities, and in the latter case the POST image can be recorded into the BIOS (for that, there is the MyLogo 3 feature). Secondly, the user can resort to the EZ Flash 2 utility integrated into the BIOS. The file with a new firmware can be located not only on a regular 3" floppy but also on a hard disk or a USB flash drive.
Finally, the board offers support for the CrashFree BIOS 3 (restoring the damaged BIOS firmware with a CD or a flash disk).
Traditionally for motherboards made by ASUS, the BIOS supports display of the settings in multiple languages (Multilanguages BIOS).
The BIOS also gives access to tuning all the features of modern processors:
In conclusion, we note the OC Profile technology which allows saving all the BIOS settings into memory and loading them on demand. ASUS Maximus Formula supports two independent profiles:
We also note the option to control the external POST screen where either the current time of a user-defined line can be displayed:
But, to be frank, we were not impressed by the device; especially once we tested the optional device ASUS ScreenDUO.
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