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FRONTPAGE ASUS Maximus V GENE Motherboard Review

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Varies widely.
Asus sometimes allows you to set whether it runs voltage control or PWM control, but it varies by motherboard.
 
I have the Gene-Z IV and the chassis fans can control both 4-pin and 3-pin RPMs, but the CPU fan header can only control 4-pin fans. Just seems strange that one set of headers can control both types of fans while the other cannot. :confused:
 
Great review! Two questions:

How does this compare with the Gigabye G1.Sniper M3? I think that's the only other mATX mobo that comes close. Seems like it might have a better sound system, but maybe not as good power circuitry? It's also $20 cheaper, and probably has better customer service vs Asus.

Also, what's the speed on that mSATA expansion board? If its 6 Gb/s, I'd consider getting a mSATA SSD as my boot drive, just to save space...
 
I can't compare directly, but just looking at photos, this board has a far superior power section.

I'm not sure the M3 has a better sound system. ASUS did a pretty good job on this one. Look at all the capacitors they use to clean up the signal - I don't see anything comparable on the Giga board. There may well be items on the board I'm unable to see though. Where did you see that it is a superior solution?

As far as the mPCIe expansion, I'm not sure its speed; I assume it is SATA II. SATA III would require a third party controller and it's doubtful they could fit that in the space. What I do know is that, even if it's SATA II, you'll be doing better for overall system performance than any SATA III mechanical drive on the market.
 
I dont know for sure but I dont see why it wouldnt be 6Gb/s. There is no controller chip because mPCIe has a dedicated lane to pch and Z77 can support 6x SATA 3 natively. Since there are only 2 SATA 3 ports on the board it makes sense that the mPCIe is probably SATA 3 right? Will confirm with ASUS as Im curious now as well.

As far as the mPCIe expansion, I'm not sure its speed; I assume it is SATA II. SATA III would require a third party controller and it's doubtful they could fit that in the space. What I do know is that, even if it's SATA II, you'll be doing better for overall system performance than any SATA III mechanical drive on the market.
 
Z77 can only support 2x SATA 3 ports (plus 4x SATA 2) - Reference chart. You had me worried for a second!

That being the case, it would require a third-party controller, right?
 
If the thing is mPCIe it's not any flavor of sata, it's PCIe.
If it's mSATA (same connector, different wiring...) then there is a question of what generation SATA.

EDIT:
Maybe I should read the review! :chair:
I bet that port shares with another, much like the eSATA ports usually do.
 
I think it's SATA II. There is nothing on this dongle to indicate it is SATA 3 (such as a controller). Without that, it could use the CPU's remaining SATA II capability (two ports of which are not used on the GENE, in favor of a third-party SATA 3 controller).

Photos (click for larger):

asus-mvg-09-300x277.jpg

asus-mvg-08-300x251.jpg

asus-mvg-32-300x167.jpg

asus-mvg-33-300x212.jpg
 
Got it, you are right, it is SATA 2. I was looking at the chipset diagram which says 6 x SATA "UP TO" 6Gb/s. Didnt realize there were only 2, but makes sense. There is no controller on the module or on the board and it is direct to pch so has to be SATA 2.

http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/chipsets/performance-chipsets/z77-express-chipset.html

Z77 can only support 2x SATA 3 ports (plus 4x SATA 2) - Reference chart. You had me worried for a second!

That being the case, it would require a third-party controller, right?
 
Confirmation from ASUS:

There is no current MSATA solution on the market that supports SATA3 ( 6G operation ). Including ours overall this is a fairly mute point as the drive is generally intended for SSD Caching. That being noted we have validated with RunCore, Patriot, Kingston and others on large mSATA modules 120 and larger for normal boot / OS drive and normal SSD performance is present ( BOOT, Application launching, Copy Performance etc ).
 
I was looking at the chipset diagram which says 6 x SATA "UP TO" 6Gb/s. Didnt realize there were only 2, but makes sense.

It'd be hard to make that statement any more misleading. If it weren't for marketing decisions like that, we wouldn't have as much of a need as we have for independent reviews to sort this stuff out. :)
 
Confirmation from ASUS:

There is no current MSATA solution on the market that supports SATA3 ( 6G operation ). Including ours overall this is a fairly mute point as the drive is generally intended for SSD Caching. That being noted we have validated with RunCore, Patriot, Kingston and others on large mSATA modules 120 and larger for normal boot / OS drive and normal SSD performance is present ( BOOT, Application launching, Copy Performance etc ).
:confused: Anand has a review of a 6 Gbps mSATA SSD right here: http://www.anandtech.com/show/5735/micron-c400-msata-128gb-ssd-review

Not sure what motherboard they were using for the test, but it had identical performance to the regular SATA 3 drive, so clearly it's running at SATA 3 speeds...

Sorry if I'm the only one who cares about this. :D
 
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