Asus Maximus VII Ranger & Hero Motherboard Review

1. Introduction2. Asus Maximus VII Ranger3. Asus Maximus VII Hero4. Z97 ROG BIOS5. Z97 ROG Software6. Testing Methodology7. Tests: System-related8. Tests: Processor-related9. Tests: Gaming-related10. Tests: Motherboard-related11. Overclocking: Frequencies12. Overclocking: Performance13. Technical: Power Consumption14. Closing Thoughts15. View All Pages

Automatic CPU Overclocking:

Asus' EZ Tuning Wizard was able to take our processor to a frequency of almost 4.6GHz (45x102MHz) with a DRAM speed of 2448MHz. Using a CPU VCore of 1.327V, which peaked at 1.344-1.360V under load, this is a fair overclock for just a few clicks.

Opting for the 4.6GHz CPU frequency boost option in the UEFI, a 4600MHz processor frequency is provided by means of a 1.327V VCore, which again peaks at 1.344-1.360V under load.

If I was running this system, I'd opt for the extra few megahertz of RAM speed that the EZ Tuning Wizard provides.

Manual CPU Overclocking:

To test the ROG motherboards' CPU overclocking potential, we first increased the CPU VCore to 1.30V, Cache voltage to 1.275V, CPU Input Voltage to 1.900V, and PCH voltage to 1.10V. We also applied enabled PLL overvoltage and set the cache ratio to 40x.

LLC was set to level 1 and tweaked if necessary (which it wasn't).

Settings were tweaked with ease and we applied the 47x multiplier to each ROG board.

Overclocking the Maximus VII motherboards is a difficult task. The advanced Z97 ROG UEFI puts a large amount of emphasis on user-led settings, which is good for knowledgeable tweakers but can cause issues when attempting a quick-and-easy overclock.

While most motherboards that we have tested with our 4790K chip are happy to provide stability with our tweaked settings and the rest left to auto, we were forced to manually adjust a range of settings for the Maximus VII boards to retain stability at 4.7GHz.

We applied a System Agent offset of +0.30V, +0.15V on the CPU I/O Analog voltage, and +0.20V on the CPU Digital I/O voltage level. While these adjustments were fairly simple to make, they do make the overclocking procedure more difficult for novice users who may well fall into the Ranger or Hero's target audiences.

While the Maximus VII Hero was happy to provide stability at 4.7GHz with tweaked settings and a CPU VCore of 1.30V, the Ranger demanded an extra 10mV on the VCore. This may show that the Hero's enhanced power delivery system does indeed deliver stronger overclocking performance.

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