Board Software

The majority of tools offered by ASUS are contained within a centralized interface called "AI Suite". AI Suite is actually just the interface pictured above, with many components accessed by clicking the appropriate buttons shown in the screenshot.


When it comes to tools, there's a huge number of them, which each having a specific functionality, whether it be changing voltages, changing fanspeeds, adjusting the VRM settings, or enabling USB 3.0 boost technologies, each has its own window that pops up when you click the appropriate button. Sensor and informational tools as well as updating tools each get their own listings as well, as seen in these screenshots.


The informational tool displays motherboard, CPU, and memory information seperately, each on its own tab, useful if you need to get support from ASUS directly, but aren't 100% sure on the components installed. The settings page is a pretty useful tool, allowing you to individually un-install or install each part of the suite, so that if there are parts you do not need, you can remove them to free up drive space.


AI Suite includes a utility that will automatically overclock your system. For me personally, it's a bit too agressive in the settings it uses, as it seems my test chip is actually a pretty good clocker, and AI Suite's Auto-Clocking will set the CPU voltage far higher than what is needed by my own chip. Due to that voltage increase, temperatures are significantly higher than what they should be, which in turn affects the CPU's ability to overclock. As long as you keep that in mind, or have really good cooling, it should not really present any issues, but if you have a good chip for overclocking like my own, you might want to stick to more traditional overclocking methods.

I have been a fan of the software ASUS has offered for some time now, as it allows users to access nearly every option in the BIOS, but in a far more familiar setting from within Windows. The BIOS itself does a good job of explaining what all the settings are, and the software extends that info in a very usable way, as well as offering a few options that just aren't possible to offer via the UEFI interface. Every tool has a very significant purpose, and we are very happy to see that ASUS takes the end user experience very seriously, not only with the hardware it provides, but also with the software.