Introduction:
Since their inception, the Asus ROG (Republic Of Gaming) series has been every gamer dream. They have got the ultimate performance, features and a unique sense of style, which worked well with the PC enthusiast and game markets, but often was just too expensive for most. This time, Asus decided that they would bring out a board for those fans as well, called the Ranger. Its the newest addition to Asus’s ROG series of motherboards after the Hero and is their most affordable yet. So lets take a look at this new board and see if it still has all of the ROG DNA in it.
Before we start off with the review, lets take a quick look at some of the main features of this motherboard:
The Maximus 7 Ranger comes in the typical Asus Maximus styled box. On the top its got a flap which contains some features about the motherboard and also shows its complete layout.
Opening the box, we can now see the motherboard wrapped in an anti static bag. Below this, there is a section with the accessories. We get the user manual, 4 SATA cables, the IO backplate, an SLI bridge, some cable management stickers, an ROG badge and a door knob hanger. All in all a decent package for a motherboard in its price segment.
Board Layout
Now lets take a look at the board itself. The board carries the same styling as the rest of the Maximus ROG series boards, a beautiful red and black theme. Taking a quick look, you may notice the 4 RAM slots, 3 PCIe x16 slots, 3 PCIe x1 slots and the M.2 connector.
Taking a closer look, on the top edge of the board we find 8-pin motherboard connector, 2 4 pin fan headers for CPU cooling placed in a convenient location. Moving to the left, we can see the large start button, a reset button and an LED display for displaying error codes. These buttons are pretty useful when your running the system on an open bench as you don’t have to mess around shorting some pins. Various error codes for the LED display can be found in the use manual. Next to that, we find the MemOK! button which is basically used to boot your system on fail safe memory settings, just in case your system got unstable while overclocking. Then we have the main motherboard power connector, a 4 pin fan header as well as the front USB 3.0 header.
Moving further down the same edge, we find 6 SATA 6Gb/s ports. Many Z97 boards these days offer the Sata Express connectors, but as you can see, Asus decided not to go for it. Today’s SSDs have started saturating the SATA 3 bandwidth, so the SATA Express, which uses PCIe lanes for much more bandwidth. Anyways, there are not many SATA Express drives available and I don’t think most gamers would really need it for some time. But if you do, don’t worry, you have other options, the board does have an M.2 connector, which we will talk about a little later.
Now moving to the bottom edge, we see a Keybot button, which we will discuss later, another Chassis fan header, 2 USB 2.0 headers, Sound Stage button and a clear CMOS button.
Moving to the back end of the motherboard, we notice the SupremeFX Audio with ELNA audio capacitors. SupremeFX is actually the Realtek ALC1150 codecbut comes with high quality components such as ENLA capacitors along with some emi chielding and PCB separation. Moving up, we have the rear IO ports. We got 1 PS2 port, 2 USB 2.0 ports, HDMI port (supports 4K video), a DVI and D-Sub port. We then got the BIOS flashback button, 4 USB 3.0 ports, 1 LAN jack and your 7.1ch audio connectors.
Flipping the board over, we notice the 2 heat sinks for the MOSFETs and a couple of ICs, which are for the Keybot feature.
Board Layout – Part 2
‘Hybrid’ 8+2 phase power
Lets take a close look at the socket. As I had mentioned earlier, the board uses a ‘hybrid’ 8 phase power delivery system, what that basically means is that this board is using a slightly cut down version of the full 8ph design (which is found on the HERO) and employs 8 chokes, 8 MOSFETs but 4 shared PWM drivers. This is a measure to slightly cut down costs and at least in theory might impact your overclocking a little bit (remember, that’s on paper).
M.2 Connectivity
Here’s an interesting one. The port shown above is the M.2 port which allow much higher data bandwidth (uses PCIe 2 lanes) than the current SATA 3 standard (10Gb/s vs 6Gb/s). Since this board does not come with Sata Express, the M.2 essentially becomes the only other option. Currently not a lot of SSDs are available that use the M.2, but many manufacturers are expected to release them within this year. Do keep in mind, you can only use SSDs that fit with the size constrains and as mentioned in the manual, the SSD can have a maximum width of 22mm and length of 80mm. Also, pay attention, when you buy these M.2 drivers, some of them use the Sata 3 bus, which will not work in these ports.
Today’s SSDs are reaching close to saturating the existing Sata 3 bandwidth (~550 MB/s sequential reads) so its a good thing to have!
Since their inception, the Asus ROG (Republic Of Gaming) series has been every gamer dream. They have got the ultimate performance, features and a unique sense of style, which worked well with the PC enthusiast and game markets, but often was just too expensive for most. This time, Asus decided that they would bring out a board for those fans as well, called the Ranger. Its the newest addition to Asus’s ROG series of motherboards after the Hero and is their most affordable yet. So lets take a look at this new board and see if it still has all of the ROG DNA in it.
- Support for 4th and 5th Gen Intel Core processors
- 8+2 phase power
- Intel Z97 chipset with M.2 support
- SupremeFX 2014 Audio
- Asus’s Radar II utility
- Asus’s KeyBot technology
The Maximus 7 Ranger comes in the typical Asus Maximus styled box. On the top its got a flap which contains some features about the motherboard and also shows its complete layout.
Now lets take a look at the board itself. The board carries the same styling as the rest of the Maximus ROG series boards, a beautiful red and black theme. Taking a quick look, you may notice the 4 RAM slots, 3 PCIe x16 slots, 3 PCIe x1 slots and the M.2 connector.
‘Hybrid’ 8+2 phase power
Lets take a close look at the socket. As I had mentioned earlier, the board uses a ‘hybrid’ 8 phase power delivery system, what that basically means is that this board is using a slightly cut down version of the full 8ph design (which is found on the HERO) and employs 8 chokes, 8 MOSFETs but 4 shared PWM drivers. This is a measure to slightly cut down costs and at least in theory might impact your overclocking a little bit (remember, that’s on paper).
M.2 Connectivity
Here’s an interesting one. The port shown above is the M.2 port which allow much higher data bandwidth (uses PCIe 2 lanes) than the current SATA 3 standard (10Gb/s vs 6Gb/s). Since this board does not come with Sata Express, the M.2 essentially becomes the only other option. Currently not a lot of SSDs are available that use the M.2, but many manufacturers are expected to release them within this year. Do keep in mind, you can only use SSDs that fit with the size constrains and as mentioned in the manual, the SSD can have a maximum width of 22mm and length of 80mm. Also, pay attention, when you buy these M.2 drivers, some of them use the Sata 3 bus, which will not work in these ports.
Today’s SSDs are reaching close to saturating the existing Sata 3 bandwidth (~550 MB/s sequential reads) so its a good thing to have!
