Test System

Initial Setup

Initial boot-up with the ASUS MAXIMUS VI HERO was quick and simple, and installing device drivers off the CD was quick and painless. There's not a lot for me to say here because everything worked exactly as expected, but I noticed that the ASUS MAXIMUS VI HERO runs with a boosted Turbo profile.

Some boards have custom Turbo profiles that boost performance at "stock" settings, giving the appearance of having more performance than they really should. ASUS has told me that they don't condone such custom profiles without informing the user but do understand that some users want this function to be available, so they do offer such Turbo profiles. A boosted Turbo profile becomes available when XMP is enabled, or at other times via a switch in the BIOS, but it can also simply be disabled via that same option in the BIOS. I personally feel that a coupon for Intel's Performance Tuning Protection Plan should be included in the box to protect against CPU failures if boards do this without giving the end user a way to turn it off, or don't explicitly state doing so. For more information on Intel's Performance Tuning Protection Plan, check their site found HERE.


I pulled the ASUS HD7970 MATRIX card out of my memory testing rig and installed it into the ASUS MAXIMUS VI HERO to take these pictures. The MATRIX card is one of the largest cards I've ever owned, yet getting it fitted to the ASUS MAXIMUS VI HERO posed no problems at all. ASUS's use of a single PCIe x1 slot up top creates plenty of room for tall tower-type heatsinks and the installation of fans onto the memory slots.


The other slots are arranged to give normal dual-slot VGAs plenty of room for airflow, and installing two of ASUS's larger VGAs is still not a probelm. The VRM heatsinks also sit nice and low, which avoids interference with large coolers well.


All together, the system makes for an impressive package that certainly appeals to me and probably many others given the success ASUS has had with the ROG line-up in the past. If anything, the ASUS MAXIMUS VI HERO looks much more sophisticated and refined, but looks aren't everything.

Power Consumption

We measure CPU power consumption since one of our first tasks is to truly verify system stability. I isolate the power coming through the 8-pin ATX connector using an in-line meter that provides voltage and current readings, and total wattage passed through. While this may not prove to isolate the CPU power draw in all instances, it does serve as a good indicator of board efficiency and effective VRM design. Total system power consumption is no longer reported as this figure can change depending on what VGA is installed. The sole board-only power measurements possible without physically modifying a motherboard are those taken via the 8-pin CPU connector, making it the only figure of value worth reporting. I use wPrime with eight threads selected in the options, since it provides a consistently high workload throughout the full length of the test and runs long enough for the VRM and CPU to produce a fair bit of heat. Most average workloads will draw far less than this, although distributed computing applications are quite similar. This is not supposed to test stability since I use several other applications to do so, but merely to provide repeatable power draw numbers that anyone can replicate. The meter used is an off-the-shelf Zalman unit that has been on the market for some time. It provides quite similar results in my test environment when compared with a FLUKE 337 clamp meter.


Power consumption with the ASUS MAXIMUS VI HERO was a fair bit higher than expected. I do have my suspicions as to why the ASUS MAXIMUS VI HERO posted the highest numbers so far, but I, to be honest, really expected much lower results. I spoke to ASUS about this and have received a few BIOSes to see if some improvements they have made deliver the expected results, and I did see a reduction in power drawn. However, that BIOS was not available to the general public at the time of writing, so I've used the BIOS the board shipped with for all of my testing. It can be found on ASUS's product page for the ASUS MAXIMUS VI HERO.