 Linus Tech Tips coverage of Computex 2013 is powered by Western Digital. Our trusted gaming gear partner is Corsair Vengeance, and our trusted retail partner is NCIX.com. Welcome to ROG. The only thing missing here is JJ, because they have an unbelievable amount of cool tech on display. This right here is a GTX 700 series card. They won't tell me what 700 series card it is, which is usually a good sign and a very cool thing. And this cooler design is called their CoolTech fan. So it actually has an enormous fin array that's, not all of it is even visible to us right now, but it's okay because there's an exploded one over on the right. It also has a hybrid cooler design that is able to do both air cooling and, see those right there? Those are G1 quarter fittings. This bad boy can be liquid cooled as well. So let's move over to the right here, where we can see the way that the design of the card actually works. So they've got a DigiPlus VRM with SAP, a completely custom card over there. So the idea is that, okay, we've got a custom PCB design that gives us more efficient cooling, more efficient power delivery so that you're not going to have any excess heat to get rid of. Then you throw a cooler at it that can get rid of all the excess heat anyway. So that's the DirectCU H2O with their CoolTech fan, and they're claiming up to 10 degrees better than reference just when you're air cooling it. Finally, of course, it's an ROG product, so there's a sweet looking shroud on it. Now let's move over to, this is what's really interesting about this. So up to 20 degrees cooler with a liquid cooling setup versus a reference cooler, which you can see here is using full custom fittings. This is one of the few things that I criticize about some of the previous ASUS liquid cooling capable products was the fact that they had built-in barbs, and they were too small, and most enthusiasts weren't going to want to use that. Now you can, okay, the tubing itself within the card, it's quite restrictive. You can actually see it's very narrow, but at least you can hook up whatever fittings you want, and you can actually liquid cool your CPU with an aftermarket block. This right here is a Maximus 6 formula which has built-in liquid cooling, and then you've got the Poseidon card which has built-in liquid cooling as well. Now right now it's all over a test bench, but trust me, when you put this in your system, it's going to look pretty freaking sweet. ROG motherboards, they just keep pushing the envelope, don't they? Now we first saw this with the Deluxe Class Z77 ITX performance motherboard. That has been stepped up a notch with the Maximus 6 impact. This features the full array of ROG features. So you got their Supreme FX latest generation technology, which has this, check this out, this is really cool. So you get a visual indicator of where sounds are coming from in-game at all times. So if the action's in front of you, you're going to be able to see that. If it's behind you, you're going to be able to see that as an indicator. You've also got an incredibly compact power delivery design that, whoa, that moves, so let's just kind of try to look up here. So much like the last generation board, which was only a channel series Deluxe board, this has a riser PCB because there wasn't enough room in the ITX form factor to fit all of the power delivery and all the features that they wanted to on this particular board. This is a Z87 board, so you've got full support for the latest fourth generation Haswell processors. And the way that they've got these boards demoed is actually phenomenally cool. So there's gigantic thermal write coolers on them that not only cool the CPU, but also the memory and the VRM, as well as the generally the PCB of the board itself. And they're showing off their DirectCU mini GTX 670. This is a short PCB card allowing it to be used in all kinds of creative configurations. With that said, let's move over to the left here, where we're going to see something very unique. So this is a high performance machine running on a cool little ROG pedestal here. Similar configuration, except check this out. Where's the graphics card? Sorry, what? The graphics card is on the bottom on the back with the power supply. I'm going to turn this around so you guys can see it. Check that out. So you've got an SFX power supply, as well as a ribbon cable that runs from the PCI Express slot all the way under this over to this GTX 670 graphics card. So this is what I mean about it being a modder's dream and enabling all kinds of cool new form factors without compromising anything in terms of performance. So Gary from ASUS has actually dug up a bare board that we can show you guys rather than the one that was on the build. Now, the reason that we want to see it in all of its gorgeous glory is that it was covered in a big heat sink and you couldn't really see some of the unique technologies that went into it. So it's an ITX form factor. So when I say ASUS wanted to deliver everything you get in a standard ROG board, then I mean that was a real challenge. So one of the things that you could sort of see before was the raised PWM. So this is the voltage regulation modules and all that good stuff. This is where the power goes from something that your power supply outputs to something that a CPU and all the other components on here can use. So there wasn't room for that. There also isn't room realistically on an ITX board for a proper sound solution. So that's where ASUS did their usual thing where they upped the ante and they built an actual external PCB that's just for the impact board that goes right here. So that way you can get high quality gaming grade audio without having to sacrifice the one expansion slot that you usually end up having, well, always end up having on a mini ITX board. The last thing that you couldn't really get a clear look at before was the MPCIe combo 2. So this supports the M.2 standard, which will allow you to plug drives in, also known as NGFF, which will allow you to plug drives in directly without using up one of your SATA ports because it is an MITX board. You only have four of them and I think that's pretty much it. Now you guys can really get a closer look at what makes this truly ROG DNA but in a much smaller form factor. Thanks, Gary. You're welcome. This is what I love about these shows. There's all kinds of stuff here that actually doesn't exist. This is the front base, which unlike the OC panel, which we've already seen on the Maximus 6 Extreme, completely designed for overclocking. You can adjust base clock by increments of 0.1. You can monitor temperatures down to sub-zero, all kinds of cool stuff you can do with that. This is more optimized for gamers. So it's more like that higher level control. So you want to be able to do things like monitor your CPU frequency, your fan RPMs. I think we were playing around with this before and I messed it up, but don't worry too much about that. You can monitor your CPU temperatures, your time. But that's not really it because there's other cool stuff that they want to enable through this thing that doesn't exist yet. So number one is there's going to be a one button overclocking method. So you click the button, CPU level up, which already exists on the motherboard, is enabled, turns your CPU speed up. Next thing they're going to be enabling is a game recording button. So if you're a gamer who's into gameplay videos, let's plays, any kind of cool thing like that, all you got to do is press the record button, which is going to be right here. And I'm sure there will be a way to trigger it through software or whatever else as well. And you can get that going as well. Last but not least, it integrates perfectly with Asus' onboard audio solutions. And they want to have a way for you to actually select different audio profiles simply using the dial on the front of your case rather than fussing about in the driver. Now of course, not everyone's an extreme overclocker. And there was a Maximus 6 Extreme over hooked up to the OC panel and all that stuff. But this is the formula. This is optimized for gaming as opposed to pure overclocking. So they've got ROG armor now that they've implemented not only on the Saber Tooth series, but also on their ROG series. Now it doesn't necessarily contribute a whole lot to the actual cooling of the board. But what it does do is it increases the rigidity of the board when it's installed in the case. So it's got a top piece as well as a back plate that Asus has validated to not cause interference with your case. So you should still have excellent case compatibility. They've completely redesigned and they've completely rethought the way that they do motherboard cooling as well. So check this out. This is the cross-chilled thermal design. The only complaint I had about the integrated liquid cooling on the Maximus 5 formula was the fact that it did not have replaceable barbs. They have addressed that. So now they're using standard G1 quarter fitting mounts. So you can see here, there's some just random Swift Tech compression fittings that they're using. There are no weird interference points or anything like that. This looks like it was designed by a water cooling company. So you're supposed to touch here and touch here. But you guys obviously won't be able to do that because it's video. So check this out. You can actually look at their OC panel right here, which is taking temperature readings from the liquid-cooled side and the air-cooled side. So there's heat loads under these. And it's about 20 degrees cooler with liquid cooling versus air cooling. Now let's talk about the new Supreme FX. Asus is really driving the industry forward when it comes to onboard audio. I personally hate onboard audio. But the one onboard audio solution that I'll accept is from Asus because they take a separated, dedicated part of the PCB and they put audio quality components on it. This is what everyone refused to do for years. And they have dramatically upgraded even the Redline audio that we already saw in the Maximus V formula. So check this out. You're getting Elna premium audio capacitors, WIMA film caps. I don't even understand half this stuff. But the point is that they are taking the engineering that went into products like Zonar and adding it directly to their motherboards. This guy right here is a dedicated headphone amp. And that's, I can certainly tell you, a larger headphone amp than I've ever seen on any other motherboard. It can handle up to 600-ohm impedance headphones. And I don't see where it is right now. But there's a Cirrus Logic CS4398 DAC. Asus is claiming up to 120 decibels sound to noise ratio on this board. Now that's not to say that features have to look bad. This is what Asus is expecting you to build with a motherboard like the Maximus VI formula. So you can see here the integrated liquid cooling that we've got on the motherboard back there. It's using bits power fittings for these extremely clean and beautiful cable runs. You've got a red liquid that's running around to it. Appears to be probably a GTX Titan would be my assumption. But I'm not able to tell because there's an EK backplate covering the entire card right there. Now the one thing I'd say is missing from this as a high-end build normally is a dedicated sound card such as a Phoebus. But you actually are getting to the point now where you can get onboard audio that is as good as high-end dedicated on a motherboard if you spend the extra on an ROG board. For me personally, not being an extreme overclocker, I'd be looking at an ROG formula board as opposed to an extreme, even though it's actually less expensive. Thank you for checking out our coverage of the Asus ROG booth at Computex 2013. Don't miss any of our coverage. And as always, don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech Tips.