Well first up is the manual – this one is actually quite useful.  While the basics of setting up the board are pretty obvious to anyone experienced the board has so many features that if you want to understand everything you’ll need to actually use this:

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Sadly though some things just aren’t explained – like the OC Panel for example.  The best information I could find for that was actually put together by Shamino for the M6E.  Even the support documents for it on the ROG site don’t really cover anything substantial.  Speaking of the OC panel of course one of the accessories will be the optional drive bay mount for it:

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You also get a wi-fi antenna:
DSC_173210 SATA cables but yet no sata express cables:

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3 thermal probes for the three motherboard probe headers:

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Headers to help hook up the front panel connectors quickly and easily:

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A bunch of SLI connectors and one token crossfire connector:

DSC_1729Crossfire connectors are less necessary now that AMD no longer use these connectors on the newer GPUs.  It should be noted that these are all black unlike the standard reference ones.  They are not the fancy new style bridges that light up though.

DSC_1735The IO backplate is nicely annotated, however I dislike that ROG moved to a silver backplate.  The ROG theme is red/black and the old IO backplates were charcoal grey that matched much better.
DSC_1740There’s also a replacement backplate for those who need to mount a less compatible pot for benching.
DSC_1736Lastly there’s a driver dvd, some swag and stickers for labelling cables.  I hate all of these to be honest.  Even the driver DVD is now redundant because so many rigs no longer bother with an optical drive, besides the drivers will be out of date anyway.  It would be better to provide a small USB stick instead.

Well enough of the boring accessories, let’s start overclocking!

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10 COMMENTS

    • Agreed, I was referring to systems that could overclock 🙂 While “real” workstation users will use that workstation board happily my “idea” of ultra enthusiasts consist of people who won’t give up their overclocked performance but still want more cores and are willing to pay for 2P. Those same workstation users who prefer more cores might even be happy with a 4P after all. Since the SR2 there have been no real overclockable 2P chips.

  3. Nice Review! Helped me a lot!

    Can you tell me the name of the Waterblock in the top picture please? It looks so sick!

  5. I think this board is too much oriented to the LN2 and TEC peoples. Of course we live under their umbrella so if ASUS covers those peoples, we are covered too. But sadly, most of us mortals won’t even use these hardware level (and few software level) features for WC builds, so don’t you think there should be lower-dog of ROG (probably R5 Formula) for X99? Or does Deluxe suffices?

    • I have to admit I’d rather see a Gene matx version before a formula. Yes for some the deluxe suffices for that role though 🙂

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