The Board - Layout

With the board out of the box, the small red-highlighted black square stands proudly, with the sheer amount of onboard features really adding to the heft of the board itself. The red highlights are restricted to just a few places; the PCIe x16 slots, two of the four DIMM slots, the USB 3.0 header, and the SATA 6 Gb/s ports are nearly the only red on the board! Flipping the board over, we find the rear of the board quite busy, with solder circles all over the place, as well as many surface-mounted components scattered throughout.


The socket area of the Maximus IV Gene-Z is quite cluttered as well, but for a product so small, it's completely expected. While the cooling for the VRMs is adequately spaced, there are capacitors on every side of the socket, which will make insulation for sub-zero cooling solutions fairly difficult. Opening the Maximus IV Gene-Z's socket lid, we found that there is open space in the socket center for two components that is not populated, something we will have to keep in mind when investigating overclocking abilities. The rear of the socket is just as cluttered as the front, with the pins for the capacitors on the front side quite close to the factory backplate, but not in a way that should interfere with the majority of aftermarket cooling solutions. We can also see some MOSFETs for the eight CPU power phases mounted on the backside too, and like the socket front, we find the hole in the center of the backside of the socket populated with many components, but there are quite a few spots left empty.


The pin headers for the Maximus IV Gene-Z are a very simple grouping; on the right side we find the front panel header, a 4-pin PWM fan port, and two USB 2.0 internal headers, while on the left we find audio headers, the ClearCMOS jumper, ON/OFF and RESET switches, and finally, a dual-digit POST display. This is much less than we are used to seeing at the board edge, yet surprisingly, nothing here is missing, or overlooked.


Taking a look at the rear I/O panel, we find seven black USB 2.0 ports, a PS/2 keyboard/mouse combo port, two blue USB 3.0 ports, and dual red eSATA/USB 2.0 combo ports. There is also a six-port audio tower, a digital optical audio port paired with an HDMI port, as well as a single LAN port. The final two items, a white USB port for the ROG Connect feature, and a small black button that can be used to clear the CMOS, are two overclocking-specific features we have found on nearly every product in the ROG lineup. There are a total of five PWM-based fan headers on the ASUS Maximus IV Gene-Z, all of which can be controlled via software from within the OS as well as the BIOS. However, the two CPU_FAN headers and the three CHASSIS_FAN headers are grouped together by name, leaving users able to adjust only the CPU and CHASSIS groups separately, and not each fan independently.


With the Maximus IV Gene-Z being a mATX form-factor product, the expansion slots are very few, with dual red PCIe x16 slots, and a single black PCIe x4 slot. The red slots will operate with x8 electrical connectivity when both are populated, while the upper slot will feature a full x16 connection when used alone. The black PCIe x4 slot is powered off of the Z68 PCH, and features an open-ended slot that can support full-length cards. There are four DIMM slots total, each supporting modules with a maximum density of 8 GB, with support in BIOS for not only up to the 2133 MHz divider we see on every 1155 board, but also for a 2400 MHz divider that was rumored to exist prior to Intel launching the platform into retail. It's also worth noting that the QVL for the board does feature listings for quite a few 2400 MHz memory modules, too.


The Maximus IV Gene-Z's cooler is fairly large, stretching from the SATA ports all the way over to the PCIe x16 slots, yet with a low profile so as to not interfere with cards installed into those PCIe slots. Underneath we find the Intel Z68 PCH itself surrounded by many surface mounted components that will remain hidden from view under the cooler.