Vik
May 4, 2017
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AT20 Giveaway Day 7.5: ASUS Motherboards, Video Cards, & Networking Gear

Taking the wheel for our afternoon giveaway in our 20 day giveaway celebration of AnandTech’s 20^th anniversary is ASUS. The Taiwanese technology titan has their fingers in a number of different product categories, so it’s only appropriate that they’ve sent us a technology sampler of sorts with products from three of their major categories: video cards, networking gear, and of course, motherboards. All told we have AMD and NVIDIA video cards, AMD and Intel motherboards, a router, and a WiFi adapter to give away this afternoon. So we have a number of prizes to give away to our lucky winners.

ASUS ROG STRIX Radeon RX 580 Gaming OC Edition (RX-580-O8G)
ASUS GeForce GTX 1060 OC Edition 6GB 9Gbps (1060-O6G-9)
ASUS RT-AC1900P Dual-Band Wireless-AC1900 Gigabit Router
ASUS PCE-AC88 4×4 802.11ac AC3100 PCIe WiFi Adapter
ASUS Prime X370 motherboard
ASUS Prime Z270-A motherboard

The AnandTech 20th Anniversary Celebration – Asus Giveaway

ASUS ROG STRIX Radeon RX 580 Gaming OC Edition

Starting things off is ASUS’s ROG STRIX Radeon RX 580 Gaming OC Edition video card. Part of the company’s high-end ROG imprint, the Strix RX 580 is their factory overclocked Radeon RX 580 card, featuring a default 1360MHz clockspeed.

ASUS ROG Strix RX 580 Specifications
	ASUS ROG Strix RX 580	AMD Radeon RX 580 (Reference)
Boost Clock	1360MHz	1340MHz
Memory Clock	8Gbps	8Gbps
VRAM	8GB	8GB
TDP	N/A	185W
Power Connectors	8pin	8pin
Length	11.73″	N/A
Width	2.5 Slot	N/A
Cooler Type	Open Air	N/A

ASUS classifies this as a 2.5 slot card, and between that and the 11.73” length, this is a sizable beast of a card. Putting that space to good use, the card is equipped with a trio of the company’s “wing-blade” fans, which also support zero fan speed idling. Meanwhile as you’d expect for a high-end video card, this is built on a custom ASUS PCB, equipped with a 7+1 phase power delivery system built from ASUS’s Super Alloy Power II components. Rounding out the package is a full RGB lighting system built into the shroud, courtesy of ASUS’s Aura Sync lighting technology.

ASUS GeForce GTX 1060 OC Edition

Our second video card from ASUS’s collection is their GeForce GTX 1060 OC Edition. While not a high-end card like the ROG Strix, the GeForce card features its own set of tricks. In particular, this factory overclocked card is one of the first GTX 1060 cards on the market to feature 9Gbps GDDR5 memory, which NVIDIA only recently started offering on factory OC cards. Coupled with that is 100MHz GPU frequency bump, making for a sizable boost over the reference GTX 1060.

ASUS GeForce GTX 1060 OC 9Gbps Specifications
	ASUS GeForce GTX 1060 OC 9Gbps	NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB (Reference)
Boost Clock	1809MHz	1709MHz
Memory Clock	9Gbps	8Gbps
VRAM	6GB	6GB
TDP	N/A	120W
Power Connectors	6pin	6pin
Length	8.6″	9.75″
Width	Double Slot	Double Slot
Cooler Type	Open Air	Blower

ASUS’s GTX 1060 is equipped with their DirectCU II cooler – a dual fan open air cooler – which like its ROG counterpart, also implements their “wing-blade” fans and zero fan speed idling. The card’s PCB is also equipped with ASUS’s Super Alloy Power II components to further set it apart from other cards.

ASUS RT-AC1900P Dual-Band Wireless-AC1900 Gigabit Router

Third up is one of ASUS’s routers, the RT-AC1900P. This is a dual-band, 3 antenna router supporting 3×3 MIMO on both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands. With the addition of support for Broadcom’s proprietary TurboQAM feature, this means the router can hit 600Mbps on 2.4GHz and 1300Mbps on 5GHz.

In terms of wired connectivity, the RT-1900 features a quarter of GigE ports, along with another GigE uplink port. A USB 3.0 port and a USB 2.0 port are provided to take advantage of the router’s significant OS capabilities, including network share hosting, cellular modem connectivity, and network printer hosting. Internally, the router is powered by a dual-core 1.4GHz processor, though ASUS doesn’t specify the exact make.

ASUS PCE-AC88 4×4 802.11ac AC3100 PCIe WiFi Adapter

Meanwhile if you need wireless connectivity on the client side of matters, ASUS has also sent over one of their PCE-AC88 WiFi adapters. This PCIe card based adapter offers 4×4 MIMO streams and the latest-generation MCS-11 (1024-QAM) modulation modes, allowing it to transfer up to 2167Mbps on the 5GHz band. The adapter also uses an external antenna pod with adjustable antennas, to allow for the best antenna positioning.

ASUS Prime X370 Motherboard

Getting to our motherboards, we also have ASUS’s Prime X370 motherboard. The AM4 motherboard sports 3 PCIe x16 slots (2x 3.0, and 1x 2.0), 3 PCIe x1 slots, and a single full-feature M.2 slot. In terms of third party controllers, we’re looking at an ASMedia controller for USB 3.1 (Gen 2) support, a Realtek ALC S1220A for audio, and an Intel I211-AT GigE LAN controller.

And as this is a Prime board, ASUS hasn’t skimped on the features either. The board features ASUS’s “5X” hardware protection, including their reinforced “SafeSlot” PCIe slots. And on the BIOS side the board features their usual high-end BIOS features – including one-click overclocking and CrashFree BIOS 3.

ASUS Prime Z270-A Motherboard

Last but certainly not least, we have ASUS’s Intel motherboard, the Prime Z270-A. This full ATX LGA 1151 board offers 3 PCIe x16 slots and another 4 PCIe x1 slots. The board also features a pair of M.2 slots – one pure PCIe and the other offering both SATA and PCIe. ASUS has also added several third-party controllers to the board, including an ASMedia USB 3.1 (Gen 2) controller, an Intel I219V controller for GigE networking, and a Realtek ALC S1220A for audio.

Otherwise like its AMD counterpart, ASUS has similarly equipped it in terms of features, including the 5X hardware protection and high-end BIOS features. The board also features a dedicated clock generator (which ASUS dubs Pro Clock) for improved overclocking, and the company is even embracing customization via 3D Printing, publishing the blueprints for a few accessories that can be printed for the board.

Finally, as with our other giveaways, this afternoon’s giveaway is only open for 48 hours, so be sure to enter soon. However please note that for legal reasons, we’re only able to open these giveaways to residents of the United States.

Good luck to everyone! And be sure to check in tomorrow for our next giveaway.

Vik
May 4, 2017
Comments are Closed

ASUS Maximus IX Extreme Z270 Motherboard Now Available: $629 with Water Block

First unveiled at CES 2017, and launched by ASUS back in early March, the availability of the flagship Republic of Gamers (ROG) Z270 motherboard has thus far been limited to Newegg in North America. That changes today with the announcement that the Maximus IX Extreme is now widely available at leading resellers in both Canada and the United States.

Built for gaming and liquid cooling enthusiasts, the Maximus IX Extreme represents the pinnacle of ASUS’ engineering expertise. ASUS has also collaborated with Bitspower in order to develop the factory-installed monoblock water cooling solution that is clearly the model’s most distinguishing feature over other motherboards. The monoblock is so large that it is likely the main factor behind this model’s price.

Designed to cool the CPU and the associated power delivery components, this monoblock incorporates flow rate, water leak, and inlet/outlet temperature sensors, all of which can be monitored and controlled from within the UEFI or the Fan Xpert IV utility. There is also ubiquitous RGB LED lighting built-in, which can be controlled by the AURA utility along with the LEDs integrated into the I/O cover, PCH heatsink, and any light strip attached to the 5050 RGB header. Speaking of headers, this motherboard has a lot of them. There are 12 fan headers, which includes 8 radiator fan headers and 2 water pump headers, and a number of additional flow rate and temperature sensor headers. Overall, this should not only negate the need for any additional fan controllers, but also reduce wiring complexity. All of these headers can be fully configured from within the UEFI or Fan Xpert IV utility.

There is also a separate heatsink included to cool the topmost M.2 drive. While it is not part of the monoblock, it does make contact with it and thus should receive some level of passive cooling. Not to be ignored, the secondary M.2 drive can be cooled with the M.2 cover that is integrated into the PCH heatsink. Both of these M.2 connectors support SATA and PCI-E 3.0 x4 NVMe SSDs, as well as Intel Optane Memory, but only the secondary connector supports longer 22110-type drives. The remaining drive storage needs are handled by eight SATA 6Gb/s ports.

In addition, the mainboard supports eight USB 3.0 ports (six rear, one header), four USB 2.0 ports (via two headers), one USB 3.1 type-A port, one USB 3.1 type-C port that supports Thunderbolt 3, and a rare USB 3.1 front-panel connector. Rounding out the connectivity is one gigabit LAN port powered by an Intel I219-V controller, onboard 2×2 802.11ac Wi-Fi with MU-MIMO that is based on Qualcomm Atheros QCA6174A chip, as well as HDMI 1.4 and DisplayPort 1.2 video outputs.

Since this is a high-end gamer-oriented motherboard, it is no surprise to see ROG SupremeFX onboard audio. This 8-channel audio solution is designed around the Realtek ALC1220A codec, but also features a Texas Instruments RC4580 op-amp, ESS ES9023P digital-to-analog converter (DAC) for the front-panel output, shielded audio circuits, impedance sensing for the front and rear headphone outputs, and color-coded and LED-illuminated 3.5mm audio connectors.

Given the pedigree of the Extreme model name, overclockers have not been overlooked either. There is a plethora of ASUS-specific features that are designed with overclocking in mind, such as the ProbeIT voltage read points, Q_Code LED, an LN2 Mode jumper, a Slow Mode Switch, an RSVD switch, a ReTry button, a Safe Boot button, a MemOK! button, a DRAM channel jumper, and the ROG Extension connector. There are also diagnostic LEDs throughout the motherboard.

Last but not least, the board features a standard complement of four DDR4 slots (which support overclocked memory speeds up to DDR4-4133), two strengthened PCIe x16 slots for graphics purposes (PCIe 3.0 x16 or x8/x8), one PCIe 3.0 x4 slot from the chipset, and one full length PCIe slot that operates at PCIe 3.0 x4. These last two slots get their bandwidth from the PCH, and there are SATA limitations that you need to research if you plan to use the mechanical PCIe x4 slot.

As mentioned in the introduction, the ASUS Maximus IX Extreme is now widely available in North America and carries a suggested MSRP of $629 USD. As a result of that price point, it supplants its predecessor, the Maximus VIII Extreme, as the most expensive LGA1151 motherboard on the market.

Buy ASUS Maximus IX Extreme on Amazon.com

Gallery: ASUS Maximus IX Extreme Z270 Motherboard Now Available: $629 with Water Block