Packaging and Accessories

Part of me is happy when I get a product in and they didn’t waste any time on the packaging, but the rest of my just loves when you get a premium product and they didn’t hold back with the unboxing experience and all of the accessories. You can tell Asus has a lot going on with the Apex just by picking up the box. I commented to my Asus rep immediately when the box came in because it has a lot of extra weight to it compared to other motherboards.

Anyhow the outside of the box is all ROG. It has the same red theme that all of their ROG products have. The main thing that is different is just the name. Then down on the bottom edge, they have a few of the supports logos for stuff like SLI and Crossfire and the Intel CPU and platform logos as well. On the back of the box, we actually get a picture of the board. In fact, there are a few. The main photo is two pictures overlayed that shows the top-down view as well as a side view of the rear I/O. It also has the RGB lighting on as well to show off that feature. Up along the top, there are a few smaller images with key features and then all around the main photo, they have the specifications listed out.

When you open up the box, the board is up on top with a plastic cover. It doesn’t come wrapped in a static bag or anything like that. Asus wants you to open everything up and see the board right away.

Then after you pull the top tray out there is another layer packed full of accessories. For documentation, they send a user guide along with a driver/software disc. There is a huge ROG sticker sheet as well as a smaller sticker sheet with SATA cable labels. They also toss in an ROG coaster.

Then diving into the accessories. You get three different solid PCB SLI bridges. One is for quad SLI, the middle one in the picture is for triple SLI, and the one on the left is for dual SLI. They made sure to space out the cards in the dual configuration. All three are blacked out, though the one on the left doesn’t look as black as the other two.

For other PCBs, you also get to ROG DIMM.2 adapters. These are an Asus exclusive. The board has two DIMM.2 slots that look just like memory slots. They are designed to run M.2 SSDs though. This design is unique and pulls the SSDs u off of your motherboard and away from the video cards were everyone else puts them. This allows them to be cooled better without having to go the full vertical design that Asus sometimes does. Each adapter has an M.2 slot on each side for a total of four. They also integrated the RGB lighting up onto these adapters and also have special mounts to mount included fan adapters right on them for additional cooling.

The wireless adapter is similar to what I've seen on other recent Asus boards. You get a vertical mount base or the adapter itself has magnets in it to stick right on to your case.

For cables, they include four SATA cables, all black and then two Aura lighting cables to hook your RGB lighting up.

The rear I/O shield is all blacked out with small legends for each connection. They have highlighted the BIOS reset button and the BIOS update compatible USB port to make that simpler as well. The back has the foil covered padding over the old metal springs so you don’t have to worry about getting cut up or messing up and sticking something in your ethernet connection and shorting it out.

Most of the rest of the stuff included in the box are screws for M.2 drives and stuff like the adapter for the front panel to make that installation easier. But they did also include a few extra covers for the backlit nameplate. This is really interesting because you can actually use a box cutter to cut the mylar on the plate, pull the extra off then install the plate with your custom design.