ASUS’s Republic of Gamers line is just what you think it is, a line of products specifically targeted at gamers. While many PC games have full tower rigs with multiple graphics card and intense watercooling others just have a simple setup. Being a PC gamer who attends multiple LAN parties a year I made the switch to a Micro-ATX system a long time ago to make it easier for me to bring my PC to events. ASUS of course catering to gamers actually has two motherboards in their Republic of Gamers Z87 stack, the Maximus VI Gene which is a Micro-ATX board and the even smaller Maximus VI Impact which is a Mini-ITX board. Today, our review will be focusing on the Maximus VI Gene, which has quite a lot of features for gamers and overclockers alike. Let’s check it out!
Special thanks to ASUS for providing us with the Maximus VI Gene Motherboard to review.
Packaging
The Maximus VI Gene comes in the typical Republic of Gaming packaging that we have seen for a while now. On the front there is a simple Maximus VI Gene logo and emblems that let us know the board is NVIDIA SLI Ready and AMD CrossFireX ready.
Flipping the box over we can see it goes into details on some of the main features of the motherboard like the SupremeFX, mPCIe Combo II, Extreme Engine Digi+ III and SLI/CrossFireX. It also has a full listing of specifications and overview of the rear I/O ports. Definitely important information if you are at the store looking to purchase this board.
Opening the box up and taking a look at the accessories that come with the Maximus VI Gene we have the mPCIe combo card, 3 bags of SATA cables, I/O shield, Q-Connectors, a door hanger, SLI connector, SATA cable stickers, software and driver CD, ROG case badge, and the user’s guide.
For a full unboxing and overview of the Maximus VI Gene motherboard be sure to check out our video below.
Would you prefer this board to the Gigabyte Sniper M5? I’ve bought two of the gigabyte boards in the last week. First DOA board I’ve ever had and I got two in a row so I think I’ll try this Asus board next instead.
Maybe I’m just old, but maybe not…is it not better to have 1 really good GPU, compared to having 2 (or more) mediocre GPU’s?
I know that ROG is a great standard of components; but does a typical gamer really need to run more than 1 GPU (if it’s of a high-end variety)…unless he/ she is running 4K graphics?
You are correct, if you are gaming in 1080p 1 GPU is all you are going to need. You will not see a huge difference in performance even if you add another GPU, this is only seen in 4K and multi-display gaming.