Hardware Asus ROG Maximus IX Extreme Review

Some thoughts...

90° ATX power connectors should be standard
Molex still needs to **** off and die
that price is insane

also... are there any cases that use the USB 3.1 front panel connector thing yet?

 

A retired carpenter will have enough fingers left to count them.

However, Lian Li sells a front panel upgrade thingamabob that adds USB3.1 (as well as HDMI for the VR users) to the front panel, while official compatibility is obviously limited to a handful of Lian Li cases a dremel makes it more universal.
http://www.lian-li.com/en/dt_portfolio/pw-ic2dah85/

 

Worth it for that amazing waterblock alone

Bitspower be beautiful

 

So, have ASUS got rid of the weird bug that can send the CPU voltage skyrocketing if the power is cycled one too many times? Or is that an REV exclusive?

 

Ugh. The SATA designers were on some powerful drugs when they designed those flimsy unreliable pieces of crap. That goes for the power AND data connections. The sooner SATA connectors are replaced by ABSOLUTELY ANYTHING ELSE AT ALL, the better.

The 4-pin drive connector may be dated and ugly(and regardless of what Shugart was doing in the 70s, we haven't needed 12v in a long time), but it WORKS. It doesn't break, it doesn't slide off, it just sits there and does its job.
I'll even take the 3.5" floppy power connector over SATA, though it is nowhere near as good.



(Ironically, the 5.25" power connector is actually an AMP design, not Molex. The ATX and PCIE power connectors are Molex connectors. But that's neither here nor there, it is simply worthless trivia.)

 

That is the option I would more likely go with, if I had a healthy budget for a major upgrade.

 

To be fair, pretty much all PC connectors are tosh. Molex power adaptors are a pain in the ass when the pins are loose and wont line up with the female connector (fnar fnar), unless you have a 3rd hand and can manipulate the wires manually.

ATX plugs can be so overly tight I feel like I'm going to tear a few layers of my motherboards PCB off when it comes time to remove them.

Front panel connectors are the bane of any build for me - tweezers, a flashlight, prayers to god and tears eventually get them on, but you only have to sneeze for one to pop off again.


Anyways, expensive motherboard is expensive. And I've never seen the appeal of Bitspower stuff, personally.

 

OMG, so true. I hate front panel connectors, surely they can be improved? And the're ugly.

 

Trufax: There was an attempt to improve the front panel connectors, replacing the slew of individual pin headers from the AT cases with a monoblock not unlike the USB2 header.
There were TWO competing pin header formats for a while, so in the end we wound up right back at square one with a bunch of tiny pin headers each going to a single switch or light, only now they all have to cram into the same space instead of being scattered all over the board where you might have room for fingertips at each one..

In conclusion: Everything is terrible, and any attempt to improve the status quo is doomed to failure.

...

But at least the ATX power connector can't easily be reversed and blow up your entire motherboard at first power-on. That's progress.
I still remember the two identical connectors with different pinouts that formed the XT/AT power connector. I remember seeing motherboards blown up because someone mixed up P1 and P2. It was trivially easy to do, and I can't figure out how this was ever an acceptable standard even for assembly-line construction.