ASUS MAXIMUS VII FORMULA/WATCH DOGS Motherboard

Slots

The ASUS MAXIMUS VII FORMULA comes with two PCI Express 3.0 x16 slots, one PCI Express 2.0 x16 slot (working at x4 or x1 speed), and three PCI Express 2.0 x1 slots.

The first two PCI Express x16 slots are controlled by the CPU, so it is based on the 3.0 specification. They share bandwidth, so if the second one (PCIEX16_2) is empty, the first one (PCIEX16_1) works at x16 speed, but if it is populated, both work at x8 speed. The third PCI Express x16 slot (PCIEX4_3) is controlled by the chipset (so it is based on the 2.0 specification) and shares bandwidth with the first SATA Express connector: if a PCI Express x4 (or x16) device is installed, the first SATA Express connector is automatically disabled.

The motherboard supports CrossFireX and SLI arrays.

There is also an M.2 slot and a mini PCI Express slot installed on module that we will show later on.

Figure 3: slots