ASUS MAXIMUS VI EXTREME Motherboard

Slots

The MAXIMUS VI EXTREME comes with five PCI Express 3.0 x16 slots and one PCI Express 2.0 x4 slot.

Usually, on motherboards based on the Z87 chipset, only the first two PCI Express x16 slots are controlled by the CPU. The other PCI Express x16 slots are controlled by the chipset, operating at a lower speed (x4 or x1) and only compatible with 2.0 specifications, which offers half of the 3.0 bandwidth. On this motherboard, however, the five slots are controlled by the processor, using a PLX PEX8747 switching chip, thus all slots are PCI Express 3.0.

The slot configuration of the MAXIMUS VI EXTREME is a little different from most motherboards we are used to see. If you are using only one video card, you must install it in the first PCI Express 3.0 x16 slot and it will work at x16 speed, but if any of the other slots are used, it will lower its speed to x8.

To install two cards, use the first and the third slots, and they will both work at x8 speed. The third PCI Express 3.0 x16 slots is disabled if the second, fourth or fifth ones are occupied, which means that the motherboard does not support five video cards.

When installing three video cards, you need to use the first, second, and fourth PCI Express 3.0 x16 slots, which will work at x8/x16/x8 configuration, and to install four video cards, install them at the first, second, fourth and fifth slots, in x8/x16/x8/x8 configuration.

The motherboard slots support both four-way SLI and CrossFireX technologies.

Figure 2: Slots

The PLX PEX8747 chip, which allows this slot configuration, is shown in Figure 3, without its heatsink.

Figure 3: The PLX PEX8747 chip

There is also one Mini PCI Express 2.0 x1 slot at a riser card, which we will show later on.