News Asus Maximus Gene XI - The Return of the King

Finally an "Enthusiast" quality board instead of the crappy STRIX m-ATX offerings. The Maximus Gene is back, long live the king !!!!
Aimed squarely at hardcore Overclockers / Benchers, this board is unlikely to appeal to someone wanting to build an m-ATX workstation or multi-GPU gaming rig.

If you are puzzling over this "Double Capacity" ram, here's what we know: "The Z390 from ASUS bring another feature, which is double-capacity ram support. We have pictures of something called ASUS ZADAK and GKILL’s Trident Z RGB DC memories. Both to be supported by ASUS Maximus XI series (Extreme/Gene)."

DIMM.2 Gives another M.2 slot.
Only 1, 16x PCI-E slot is not something we've seen before on a Gene Board either!


https://videocardz.com/newz/asus-z390-maximus-xi-extreme-and-gene-leaked

Edit: Some clarity on what this "Double Capacity" memory is in the link below!
https://www.techpowerup.com/247949/...actor-a-workaround-to-low-dram-chip-densities

 

[visuar]

Honestly, I hardly find a selling point for that motherboard outside of the overclocking world.

I'm somewhat surprised by this. Perhaps what I'm trying to accomplish is different than what most are looking for. Here's why I'm seriously looking at this board:

1. Smaller is better, this is SFF after all
2. Need 10 Gbe. They refuse to put it on the mATX/ITX boards, so need a x4 slot. It's nice this board has it behind the GPU so GPU can suck in fresh air without any other card blocking it.
3. Intel Optane 905P M.2 because of massive iops. Should really help with large project compilation etc. Won't be big because $$$.
4. Need 2nd M.2 for extra space (games etc.). At least some of the Z390 mITX boards have 2x M.2 now. I could see having a third in the future.
5. Wireless VR seems to be moving to needing a PCIe card as well (WiGig), so I could use one of the extra M.2 slots for that in the future.

Looking at the manual for this board, it *looks* like the PCIe x16 slot *only* drops down to x8 if *one* of the DIMM.2 slots is used: "When an M.2 is installed to the DIMM.2_1 slot, the PCIEX16/X8 slot will run in X8 mode". The DIMM.2 module has 2 M.2 slots: M.2_1 and M.2_2.

So that should leave 3 usable M.2 slots before dropping GPU to x8. My only wish was that this board had 4 RAM slots and Thunderbolt.

 

[GuilleAcoustic]

If you need more than a GPU and another expansion card (10Gbe, WiGig, PCIe SSD, etc), then this card is a miss as you'll need an m.2 extender.

And even then, m.2 are all located on the DIMM slots area (2x between DIMM.1_2 and DIMM.2, 2x on DIMM.2), making an m.2 extender pretty hard to integrate.

As mentioned by others, I'm pretty sure it has only 2 DIMM as it is more stable when overclocking (compared to 4 DIMMs).

This is probably a fantastic performer, for 2 DIMMs, singleGPU (SLI is dying anyway) and 10Gbe/WiGig, but this has poor expandability compared to less overclocking oriented mATX motherboards.

This motherboard looks more like a smaller version of the monster Intel used to showcase their (oops we forgot to mentioned it was overclocked) CPU.

Asus even advertised it toward subzero and extreme extreme overclockers on the product page (hence the 8+8 EPS).

If you add the right angle headers at the bottom, then this board isn't even made for true mATX chassis (they'll be against the bottom panel).

 

[visuar]

I agree those right angle headers are extremely annoying.

I'd love to hear of any board at this size or smaller for 8th/9th gen Intel (or latest AMD) that has USB 3.1 gen 2 and the expansion options I've mentioned above (x16 for GPU, x4 for 10 Gbe, x1 or more for WiGig and 2x M.2).

 

[Bun-Bun]

Bifurcation on mATX kind of defeats the point of going mATX over mITX.

Honestly, I hardly find a selling point for that motherboard outside of the overclocking world.

I was asking what did the previous poster mean by Bifurcation mods. I have not heard this term before used in context of PCs.

Look at the Asus forums https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?105408-Rog-MAXIMUS-XI-GENE-Z390#post739142

And then I checked the Canada and USA websites, neither list the XI Gene

 

[VegetableStu]

I was asking what did the previous poster mean by Bifurcation mods

oh right missed your comment. sorry ,_,

basically your board can't spit lanes any more from what it's configured to (e.g. ATX boards have two x16 sockets that run on x16/x0 or x8/x8, but can not further bifurcate to x4/x4/x4/x4 without active Lane Multiplexers/switchers like PLX)

so in this context I'm thinking of adapting the lanes on the m.2 socket into a proper PCIe x4 socket. for those REALLY hardcore lane bifurcation (usually for ITX boards because there's only one x16 socket on the board) they'd would need a motherboard that specifically does this to allow for dual x8 risers, or hope a PLX card would work with the system

EDIT: the common-god example of this would be the recent quad m.2 x16 card for X299 and X399 systems, in which the system is set up to split one specific x16 slot to x4/x4/x4/x4

 

[chx]

the common-god example of this would be the recent quad m.2 x16 card for X299 and X399 systems, in which the system is set up to split one specific x16 slot to x4/x4/x4/x4

With the first gen Threadrippers being cheap now, you can assemble a <$1000 PC with 10 GbE on motherboard and the capability to add 8 M.2 disks for another grand to get a terabyte of insanely fast scratch disk. https://www.guru3d.com/news-story/eight-nvme-m2-ssds-in-raid-on-x399-threadripper-reach-28-gbs.html

 

[gintasr]

I'm interested in building with this board in a Cerberus with a SF600 PSU and 9900K with RTX2080 TI.

The question I have is.... the SF600 only has 3 x pin CPU/PCI-E outputs and this board required 2x8 CPU and the RTX would require another 2x8 PCI-E

Is this even possible with SFX?

 

[Legion]

I'm interested in building with this board in a Cerberus with a SF600 PSU and 9900K with RTX2080 TI.

The question I have is.... the SF600 only has 3 x pin CPU/PCI-E outputs and this board required 2x8 CPU and the RTX would require another 2x8 PCI-E

Is this even possible with SFX?

You can power the CPU with 1 EPS cable, you absolutely do not have to use 2

 

[confusis]

The only reason you'd need two is some insane CPU overclock - a single EPS 12v connector with 8 pins can handle just under 340 watts.

 

[sfxbajan]

Where is the x470 version

 

[visuar]

Just saw that this board is NOT going to be sold in North America: https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?105715-XI-GENE-availability

 

[sfxbajan]

Just saw that this board is NOT going to be sold in North America:

That is not what he said.

 

[VegetableStu]

That is not what he said.

that's the vlada011 guy o_o look at Raja@ASUS comment

 

[sfxbajan]

that's the vlada011 guy o_o look at Raja@ASUS comment

I did before I made my comment and my comment still remains... but that is the english language for you.

 

[visuar]

Not for sale in North America. That may change at some point, though.

Seems pretty clear to me

So far I've only seen it for sale outside of NA.

 

[edoram85]

Hi,

I've a problem, I have this mb with a 9900k and a nmve m.2 960 evo.
When I install the m.2, pcie 16x slot drops to 8x, I tried to install m.2 each of every 4 slot of the mb ( 2 for dimm.2 e 2 for onboard slots).
Also upgrade and downgreade firmware with same results... If I install a simply sata ssd, pcie runs @ 16x....

Please HELPPP!