When ASUS announced their Republic of Gamers Z87 motherboards there was one missing, a Formula board. ASUS told us it would be coming, but we did not know when or why they didn’t just announce it. They wanted to announce it at Computex and go over many of its new exclusive features. It is one good looking motherboard!
ASUS Maximus VI Formula Motherboard
The Maximus VI Formula will be the 5th Maximus VI board. ASUS has already unveiled the Maximus VI Extreme, Hero, GeneZ and Impact boards. The Maximus VI Formula is an ATX board that supports the latest Intel 4th Generation Core Haswell processors and combines the Z87 chipset. One of the most apparent things that stands out about this board is the new ROG Thermal Armor. ASUS has been using thermal armor on their TUF series, but now have brought it over to the ROG boards. Just like the Z87 Sabertooth you have the armor on the front and back of the board. Also added to the board is built-in CrossChill cooling technology that sits on top of the VRMs which allow for users to watercool the board.
The Formula has an identical CPU VRM to the Maximus VI Extreme board. The VRM features Extreme Engine Digi+ III power delivery, featuring 60A BlackWing chokes, 90% efficiency NexFET MOSFETs and 10K Black Metallic capacitors. Expansion slots on the board include three PCI Express 3.0 x16 slots, and three PCI Express 2.0 x1 slots. Storage is made up of up 10 SATA 6GB/s ports. You also have Intel Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11ac WiFi and Bluetooth 4.0.
This board also features ASUS’s SupremeFX audio which includes 120dB SNR headphone output with a 600ohm headphone amplifier, and renowned WIMA and ELNA audio capacitors. Differential signal processing with OpAMP and EMI shielding reduce electromagnetic interference, too.
No word yet on pricing or availability.
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Source: ASUS PR | News Archive
Hardware features are closer to the Extreme than it is to the Hero. Expect price to be much closer to the Extreme level rather than the Hero level.
Bang for buck it seems Hero will be the better choice, but the Formula looks great.
I cant believe that they did not put a small cover over the cmos battery ! You know its eventually going to go bad and need to be replaced, sometimes within 3 months if you happen to get a bad battery when it was new.