Board Software

The core of the software provided with current ASUS boards is tied to the installation of Armory Crate, which as standard includes Aura LED lighting as well as Fan Xpert 4. Apart from AI Overclocking, there are no manual overclocking controls here, but that's best left to the EFI anyway. What you do get is a front screen with system information such as frequency, voltage, temperature and fan speeds shown on a dashboard, that also includes basic lighting and fan speed controls.

Heading in to Aura Sync, you're able to synchronize devices and headers and lighting on the board itself and obviously pick from effects and colors. Fan Xpert 4 is extremely useful and probably the main reason you'd want to install Armory Crate. The issue with applying settings in the EFI is that you're not able to run a stress test at the same time to fine tune your results.

You can with Fan Xpert 4 and if need be manually transfer these settings to the EFI if you prefer not to have the software installed. What would be useful is if ASUS came up with a way to save these fan settings to directly to the EFI, but that's an idea for another day. However, the software has the same amount of control as the EFI except for switching between DC and PWM modes. You can change the temperature input, fully configure the fan curve as well as spin up and spin down times.