Using the T_SENSOR on Asus Maximus VII Gene board

One of the new features introduced by Asus with the new round of motherboards for the mainstream Intel CPUs was the ability to incorporate thermal readings of a user installable thermal probe for its monitoring and fan controlling software. Not all motherboard supports it and not all of them came with the thermal probe even if supported. Only the highest end boards came with the probes. Despite my Maximus VII Gene board being the highest end Micro ATX board made for this platform by Asus (or any other vendor for that matter), it didn’t came with the probe. Sadness, but at least it indeed supported this feature.

When I was moving the system from the ATX case to the Micro ATX case the other day (read all about it here), I came across an extra thermal probe that came bundled with the old Scythe fan controller that I had been using a while back. I had already sold the fan controller via Rakuten Auctions (because I moved from it to the Fan Xpert software on Asus boards) without bundling it up. Well, there is nothing I could do about it now, but I wanted to see if that particular probe was compatible with the motherboard.

And, it was!

Now, temperature of which component should it sense? I thought about the temps cooling plan of the case, and there was only one obvious candidate. The video card. The side intake towards the front of the case was simply pumping fresh air in for the video card. It doesn’t have to run at all, if the video card is idle. So I figured that I could control the fan speed of that fan according to the video card’s temperature. The top intake and the rear exhaust were directly associated with the CPU anyways.

Maximus VII Gene installation experience

In the previous post I mentioned that I got my new board and also about some issues I had while installing it. But I didn’t post any pics, so here are some photos of the entire thing.

Food! The little guy joined the party.

In the box.

My second ROG board is here - Maximus VII Gene

In the previous post I mentioned that I managed to sell my Maximus VI Hero motherboard that I bought only last year. The reason for selling this was to move to a small form factor PC. This board a was an ATX board.

The board that I bought to replace it was the micro-ATX model of the same series, but with the newer chipset. The newer chipset, the Intel Z97 chipset didn't offer much over its predecessor, the Z87, but since I was buying a new board I didn't feel like going with the older chipset even though it would have saved few bucks. The new board would give me the opportunity to move to Broadwell when it finally comes out. But I doubt I will ever upgrade to Broadwell as it wouldn't bring anything other than power consumption optimisations to the table.

The next question you might throw at me is why I went with a Micro ATX board when there are Mini-ITX options. Simple answer is that I am already set on the case, which is the Silverstone Sugo SG09 or SG10 (the price will decide which one I would settle with), and it is primarily a Micro ATX case. It does support Mini-ITX boards too, but Micro-ATX form factor would give me more options. Besides this case is smaller than most of the Mini-ATX cases such as the Corsair 250D and Bitfenix Prodigy. Of course there are smaller cases but such as the Coolermaster Elite 130 or Fractal Node 304, but the cooling capabilities of these smaller cases are mediocre compared to the one I chose. Besides, the SG09 is only about 20% larger than them.

There is another reason as well. My current case only supporting up to Micro ATX boards. It doesn't support mini-ITX motherboards so I would have to buy the new case altogether and try to sell the old case later on. I didn't want to go that route.

A micro ATX board was the ideal choice all around.

One step closer to the dream - Maximus VI Hero goes out

Guess what? Someone bid for my Maximus VI Hero board which I exhibited on Rakuten Auctions a while back. That means I can now get a Micro ATX motherboard to go into my potential SFF build.

Sadly, the guy didn't pay for the board until Monday, despite having the bid going through by Saturday night. The auction was supposed to go up to Sunday night but I told him that I was going to terminate the auction early (which I did) but probably he didn't see it. While Monday was also a holiday for us here in Japan, it would have been great of he could confirm the bid on the same day so that I could order a new motherboard and have fun with it on both Sunday and Monday.

Doesn't matter. At least I could get rid of it at a price much higher that what the shops here would have offered me. This means fun times again. Research, research and more research.

A while back I wrote a post about  Micro-ATX motherboards that I was interested in. At that time the ASRock Z97M OC Formula was the best option. The Maximus VII Gene probably is the best board in terms of stability, user-friendliness and quality but it was much more expensive than the ASRock. However, the price gap between the two had shrunken in the last few weeks, hence the Gene was massively overpriced. Still I wanted to save some bucks if I could.

Z97 Micro-ATX boards and Wi-Fi support

I’ve been looking at few of the Micro-ATX motherboards based on Intel’s Z97 chipset to go in my future SFF build in the Silverstone Sugo SG10 case, but none of them seems to come with integrated Wi-Fi connectivity. The Mini-ITX boards and the high-end standard ATX boards do. I find this weird.

The boards I had been looking at are:

• Asus Maximus VII Gene
• Asus Z97 Gryphon
• Gigabyte Z97MX Gaming 5
• ASRock Z97M OC Formula
• MSI Z97M GAMING

None of these have Wi-Fi support. Not even the old 802.11n. I cannot believe these companies have ruled out these motherboards as suitable for portable gaming rigs. Maybe that’s why. These are “gaming” oriented boards. No gamer uses Wi-Fi connectivity when playing games. Maybe the manufacturers think that they are not useful either.

But I would have liked to see the option in there. I mean, if the mini-ITX boards have Wi-Fi, I don’t see any reason why the Micro-ATX variants cannot. They have all the real-estate to implement it.

Disappointed, like always!