Final Thoughts
You know in many people’s minds micro ATX motherboard are cheap, boy are they wrong! The Maximus V Gene is probably the most feature-packed Z77 mATX motherboard and it has more features than many full-sized Z77 motherboards! ASUS knows gamers attend LAN parties whenever they can and I’m sure they know what a pain it is to carry a large tower from event to event. The Maximus V Gene is the perfect motherboard to create an awesome small form factor system that can compete with any full-sized system out there.
One of the biggest features of the Maximus V Gene is the fact that they were able to fit both mPCIe and mSATA on the board. The small add on card makes this possible and since this is a smaller motherboard where space is limited I was very impressed that ASUS added this feature. Of course you can use the mSATA slot for an solid state drive. The mPCIe slot can be used for something like a wireless card since this motherboard does not come with wireless capability.
Besides the add on card you have quite a large feature set since this is an ASUS and more importantly Republic of Gamers motherboard. ASUS loads this board with an Intel Ethernet port and adds their GameFirst II software that allows you to take full control over your network connection. Along with GameFirst you have the AI Suite II software which not only is extremely useful, but also is extremely easy to use.
This board is an overclocking monster. I was able to take my i7-3770K from its stock setting of 3.5GHz and go all the way up to 4.9GHz (40% overclock) and that was done by just increasing the multiplier. I did not have to change voltages or anything like that. That is extremely impressive, especially for a mATX motherboard! If you are not that comfortable with overclocking in the BIOS ASUS has their Level Up settings that allow you to instantly overclock the system based on set overclocks.
When it comes down to it ASUS has the perfect motherboard for anyone who wants to build a small form factor gaming system. With the Maximus V Gene you can fit two video cards in SLI or CrossFire, you have all of the benefits of the Z77 chipset, both mSATA and mPCIe support, and of course the quality and features that you would expect in an ASUS motherboard. The Maximus V Gene is selling for $199 at my favorite online retailer. Overall ThinkComputers gives the ASUS Maximus V Gene a 10 out of 10 score and our Recommended Award!
Pros:
– mPCIe & mSATA add on card
– Easy overclocking
– AI Suite II & GameFirst II software
– SupremeFX III sound
– Multi-GPU support
– So many features in a small package
Cons:
– None that I found
