With the release of the Maximus VII Impact, ASUS looks to improve on what many people considered the best available mITX motherboard in the Maximus VI Impact. Other than the obvious update to the Z97 chipset, the Maximus VII Impact offers several other noteworthy improvements that we’ll explore today. ASUS is out to prove again that good things can indeed come in a small package. Let’s go find out if they succeeded!
Its a good day to be a PC enthusiast I have to say. A couple of weeks ago, Intel released their new Haswell-E enthusiast line of CPU’s and motherboards. Our very own Lvcoyote had a chance to review the flagship CPU, the i7 5960X, as well as a couple of other motherboards so far. Today, I bring you the first MSI X99 offering in its high end gaming board, the X99S Gaming 9 AC.
With the pending release of the new NVIDIA 900 series graphics cards, ASUS will offer two new video cards from their STRIX line at launch. Based on the NVIDIA GM204 Maxwell GPU, these cards will feature the ASUS proprietary DirectCU II cooler with 0dB fan technology, be factory overclocked, and come with 4 GB of GDDR5 vRAM.
On the eve of the new NVIDIA GTX 900 series graphics cards, Galaxy has announced a global unification with it’s European brand KFA2. The merger brings along a new name… the company will now be called GALAX. Immediately after announcing the merger, GALAX announced the release of their initial NVIDIA GTX 900 series graphics cards.
EVGA has hit the X99/Haswell-E market with three new motherboard offerings. They include the X99 Micro, X99 FTW, and today’s review sample… the X99 Classified. As EVGA’s flagship X99 offering, it is aimed at the PC enthusiast, overclocker, and anyone looking to build a high performance system. A lot of attention was paid to the onboard devices EVGA used on this motherboard, which means you get a feature packed offering in the X99 Classified. Should this be the motherboard you choose for your X99 system build? Let’s find out if we can answer that question!
Back when ASUS first released their initial line of Z97 chipset motherboards, they promised a Maximus VII Formula and Maximus VII Impact would follow. They held true to their word, and today, we’ll introduce you to the Maximus VII Formula. In typical ASUS fashion, this enthusiast level ROG motherboard comes packed with onboard and software features that make it a unique offering. The ASUS Formula series motherboards have been around for a few generations now, so let’s get started and see what this newest iteration has to offer.
Recently we had a chance to look at a couple of EK products. I reviewed their 295×2 waterblock,and just a few days ago Lvcoyote reviewed their Supremacy EVO CPU waterblock. Both of those products performed quite well during their reviews. Today, we have a complete custom kit from EK, which they call the EK-KIT X240. This kit comes with a 2×120 mm double thick radiator, their DDC 3.2 PWM Elite Edition pump, the Supremacy Clean CSQ waterblock, and all the parts needed to complete a full custom loop. Today, we will put it through its paces and see how it fares!
Freshly released with the Devil’s Canyon CPUs is EVGA’s Z97 motherboard lineup. Falling in the middle of this new lineup is the Z97 FTW. This motherboard is marketed toward a more budget-minded crowd than the flagship Z97 Classified. Don’t let this fool you into thinking that the Z97 FTW is going to perform poorly though, because it doesn’t. The Z97 FTW is still designed to push any i5 or i7 to the limits of your cooling and loaded with nifty features that both new builders and veterans can appreciate!
Memory manufacturers are on a tear as of late, rolling out a plethora of DDR4 memory products for the new X99/Haswell-E platform. Our latest review sample to arrive is the ADATA XPG Z1 DDR4-2400 MHz 32 GB kit. The kit consists of four 8 GB modules surrounded by some pretty sharp looking heatsinks. The XPG Z1 memory falls in ADATA’s gaming and overclocking family and has the slogan “Efficiency Double, Performance Unlimited” to go along with it. Translate that slogan to mean low voltage and high performance. Ok, so it all sounds good on paper, so let’s get busy and find out how it performs in the real world!
Memory manufacturers continue to push the speed limits of DDR3 memory; and today, we’ll be looking at one such kit in the form of ADATA’s XPG V3 DDR3-2933 MHz kit. This ADATA offering appears to have everything the enthusiast user looks for in a high performance memory kit… and then some. There are a few other unique features the XPG V3 memory kits offer that we’ll explore as well, so let’s get going and see what ADATA has come up with!
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