ASUS R.O.G. Maximus II Formula (Intel P45) pictures

Azza · 9 May 2008 at 22:23

source

RJC · 9 May 2008 at 22:28

Looks good! is that what happens when you overclock to much!!! (bottom right hand picture)

mysticsniper · 10 May 2008 at 00:22

The colour scheme looks good, not sure about the cooling thou. I still like the Gigabyte board better

BUFF · 10 May 2008 at 00:42

do we really need 16 phase PWM?
& does it really run 16 phase all the time or drop down to e.g. 8 except under certain conditions?

interesting that they have gone X-Fi or onboard sound.

mmorpheus1 · 10 May 2008 at 00:49

I have got the Rampage Formula, Same x-fi card , and it lights up blue :cool:

cool

Strife212 · 10 May 2008 at 00:54

I've not been keeping up...whats P45 all about then? Is it better or worse than X48 / X38?

Skyboat · 10 May 2008 at 01:30

Worse really, has less PCI-E lanes available for multiple-GPU setups. Comes with the newer ICH10 southbridge though.

Slinky1989 · 10 May 2008 at 01:35

You know, it may be absolute balls, but people will still buy it because....well, that has to be the "coolest" looking motherboard I've ever seen

If a motherboard can look cool

porta · 10 May 2008 at 12:51

does look nice and battery in a good place for a change if you have just the one gpu.

pastymuncher · 11 May 2008 at 18:58

Yet another awful heatsink contraption. It's so clearly desinged to work with the stock Intel cooler yet the group of people this board is aimed at will either be on water or high end air, neither of which will supply those heatsinks with the cooling they need. It also look's like it won't be so easy to replace that one with heatsinks or waterblocks. The NB would be ok but the SB one is huge. Does that have an extra chip under it so it can supply two full speed pci-e 16x lanes?

p4radox · 11 May 2008 at 19:07

I'd avoid it purely because of the Creative X-Fi

Benihana · 12 May 2008 at 08:49

Would most people go for P45 over X38 or even X48? I'm just thinking is the X series that much better now the P45 has ICH10/R?

Senture · 12 May 2008 at 09:12

My first reactions at the cooling: "WTF?!"

Looks interesting, but WTF at the cooling.

Richdog · 12 May 2008 at 09:20

Benihana said:
Would most people go for P45 over X38 or even X48? I'm just thinking is the X series that much better now the P45 has ICH10/R?

The X48's are the higher end boards. P45 is an upgrade to P35, which are lower-specced boards. The X-series isn't MUCH better at all unless you use crossfire (I don't), so for 99.9% of people a P45 will be fine for them.

In practise the performance differences will be negligible though I expect.

V|per · 12 May 2008 at 11:27

965 -> p35 -> p45

975 -> x38 -> x48

That's the upgrade path, with the 1st line being the cut down versions of the 2nd line.

Love the look of the board, but the practicality of it is just silly, as has been mentionned, this board is going to be aimed at users that will not be using a heatsink/fan combo that blows onto the cpu. Water would be hell to use also, bet it'd take a while to get all that metal off!

pastymuncher · 12 May 2008 at 11:39

V|per said:
bet it'd take a while to get all that metal off!

If they use the same epoxy stuff they used on the X38 boards then it will be a nightmare. I had that problem with my P5E.

Wilst · 13 May 2008 at 18:17

V|per said:
965 -> p35 -> p45

975 -> x38 -> x48

That's the upgrade path, with the 1st line being the cut down versions of the 2nd line.

Without being a pedant wasn't 975 just the poor prelude to 965? I'm sure i remember 975 being generally quite a bad clocker without many "premium" boards availible, whereas 965 was a beast with lots of "premium" boards.

Are there heatpipes underneath those heatsinks? There's one visible going to the PWM's from the northbridge.

BUFF · 16 May 2008 at 01:00

BUFF said:
do we really need 16 phase PWM?
& does it really run 16 phase all the time or drop down to e.g. 8 except under certain conditions?

as it most likely will be a common PWM design across most of their P5Q boards this may be a bit of an answer:

"The P5Q3 may report the use of a 16-phase PWM but we know better. Although ASUS design engineers have added a lot of extra chokes and MOSFETS, the overall capacity of the power delivery circuit remains comparable to their competitors' more modest 8-phase designs. One thing's for certain, we can all agree that more phases do not necessarily make for a more stable power subsystem. Although we did not experience any problems with this particular solution we would rather see ASUS concentrate their efforts on designing an entirely new circuit based on a true 6-phase PWM."

http://anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3309&p=2

Wilst said:
Without being a pedant wasn't 975 just the poor prelude to 965? I'm sure i remember 975 being generally quite a bad clocker without many "premium" boards availible, whereas 965 was a beast with lots of "premium" boards.

975X doesn't reach the same high fsb as 965/P35 etc. (typically middle 400s with a C2D & mid 300s with a Quad) but it's a faster chipset clock for clock e.g. if you had a 965 & a 975X both running an E6400 @ 8x425 the 975X would give better results.

Robert · 16 May 2008 at 09:34

Daym that looks good...

Hmmmmmmmm

Benihana · 16 May 2008 at 10:39

To everyone that was talking about the heatsink looking poor for watercooling..

While the heatpipe array remains very low profile to distribute the heat evenly – the north bridge and one of the PWM heatsinks are independently removable so you can use whatever cooler you want. This gets them around the heatpipe and watercooling limitation where people want to use their own.

Taken from http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2008/05/16/first-look-asus-p5q3-maximus-ii-formula/3