Board Layout and Pictures

As soon as you get the Apex out of the box it is clear that Asus was looking to do something different on this board. Just like the packaging, it is extremely heavy but it is the overall board shape that stands out the most. This is a standard eATX board in overall dimensions but on the left and right sides as well as down on the bottom they have notched the board, giving it sort of an X shape. I originally thought this might be some weird cost-saving measure but then I realized that it actually costs them more. I confirmed this when talking to Asus as well. With this design, they have to come back later to make the cuts after the PCB is made. The left and bottom cuts don’t do too much though the bottom one might be a nice place to run your bottom cables through. The one on the right is lined up with the SATA connections so if you are packing this board into a small case you have more room to hook SATA up without going past the edge.

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Beyond the shape, the Apex has the same colors as Asus’s Strix boards sticking with blacks and grays with the PCB being black, both black and gray in the plastics, and the grays in the cooling. They also have the angular styling in all of the cooling as well to also match that look. So being an ROG board they didn’t just toss a basic heatsink on the Apex and call it a day. There are three heatsinks in total. The low profile one next to the PCIe slots is the chipset heatsink. This is angled and placed in line with the angled SATA ports. It doesn’t have much for groves or anything to expand the surface area, but the chipset doesn’t need a lot of cooling. For X299 it’s the power circuitry that needs cooling and Asus stepped things up here over what I saw with the X299 Deluxe at launch. There is one heatsink just above the CPU that is about an inch tall with slits cut into it to expand the surface area. They used heatpipes from that one over to the left where they have made a heatsink that also doubles as the I/O shield. Given how many motherboards that use plastic on the I/O cover then try to make it look like it is integrated in with the cooling it is a nice change. I love this design. So not only does the I/O shield keep things looking better but it is now also functional.

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Down below the CPU right where you used to see more cooling Asus slipped in a small ROG logo on a plate. It is backlit with Aura lighting but what makes this special are the two screws that you can remove and swap the cover out. They include four replacements that you can hand cut out your own design into. I love the idea of this though I would rather use my plotter and cut the design digitally to make it look better.

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Starting up in the top left corner, let's check out some of the smaller details on the Apex. The I/O and I/O cover/heatsink along with the CPU socket take up most of the room in this are but there are a few things going on. For starters, we have two of our four RAM DIMMs here on the left side of the CPU. Asus went with just a total of four DIMMs on this board. I’m told this is to better focus on overclocking limits as running a lower number of DIMMs does help with overclocking. It also opened up the space to have their DIMM.2 tech on board as well. These look just like ram slots only they are to be used with the included adapters. Each of the two DIMM.2 adapters lets you hook up two M.2 drives and run them in RAID. The left slot is set to run with VROC and the right from the PCH so they are on different controllers. Also up in this area, down next to the bottom of the DIMM.2 slot are two four pin PWM headers. Then up top just above the I/O there are two more as well as an RGB Aura lighting header.

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The top right is also filled mostly with the CPU socket and memory but there is a little more space here. Next to the memory is the second DIMM.2 slot. Up above the CPU, there are two 8-pin CPU power headers. The new Intel CPUs pull a lot of power even at stock and have been known to pull 600 to 1000 watts when you push the limits overclocking. Both connections have also been upgraded with thicker gauge pins for the power to help with that power delivery. Up in the top right corner, there are another four PWM fan headers, we are already up to 7 and that doesn’t count the two more down behind the 24 pin motherboard power. There is a large power button and a reset button for benchtop use along with two more smaller buttons for overclocking. The LED status indicator is tucked in with boot status lights on the PCB above it. There are more overclocking specific switches for things like slow mode and a jumper for LN2 mode. Next, to those, there are small pads to keep an eye on voltages with a multimeter as well. The tiny jump switch box lets you turn off each PCI slot. For normal folks, there is also a new style USB 3.1 header down at the bottom as well.

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The bottom right corner is the first one with a cut out of it but before you get to that you have two USB 3.0 headers that have been turned at a right angle to keep from having those cables sticking up in your case. The six SATA ports are angled inside of the cutout portion and it allows you to hook up cables even if your board is right up against the edge of your case. Down below that we have even more fan headers! There are three more fan headers, one is labeled as a pump header because it can handle up to 3 amps of power then there is a three pin water cooling flow header that lets you hook your water cooling into Asus’s software and turn off your computer if something happens. Speaking of that, you can’t see them but one of the coolest features on this board are the moisture detection sensors all over the board on the back, under each PCI slot, etc. These will pick up if your water cooling leaks or if you get drips when doing extreme cooling and turn your PC off before damage is done. Anyhow still down on the bottom corner we have the front panel connection. Then the four jumpers next to that actually let you manually turn off each lighting section if you don’t want all of the flashy stuff. There is a USB 2.0 header that is a combo header for the ROG extension boards. There is also a red BIOS button to switch between the boards two BIOS. Then over on the right, there is a small MemOK button that will automatically get you up and running if you have memory compatibility issues.

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Now down in the bottom left corner, we have two more of the cutouts in the PCB. The one on the left doesn’t really offer anything for wire management but I can imagine myself slipping a few wires in the bottom cutout. That corner has the front panel audio hookup next to a Molex power connection for the PCIe slots. There is a TPM (trusted platform module) header and then another RGB lighting header for the Aura lighting. There are four full-length PCIe x16 slots and then there is a x4 length slot with an open end that can work with some longer devices. The x16 length slots are all gray and spaced out.  Each will get you at least x8 bandwidth with higher end Core-X CPUs with the top and third slots giving full x16 in those situations. For audio, the Apex has an ROG Supreme FX 8 channel onboard soundcard using the S1220A CODEC. It has impedance sense for the front and rear headphone jacks as well as dual headphone amps as well to help push higher end headphones as well.

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The rear I/O is packed and I love it. Over on the left, you have a CMOS reset button and a button for Asus’s audio BIOS update. Then you have the onboard Intel Wireless AC hookup for the included antenna then two PS2 ports for anyone who wants to run old peripherals. I get the keyboard one for Model M’s but who needs PS2 for their mice… For USB you get two USB 2.0 jacks and then six USB 3.0. In the middle the red USB port is a gen 2 USB 3.1 as is the Type-C, both are up under the Intel NIC that is red to show that it has surge protection. Then for the audio setup, you get the normal 5+optical on the far right.

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The back of the board shows off that jet black PCB and the “X” shape. The two main heatsinks have large backplates as well as the CPU socket backplate. Then from down here, we can better see the split PCB around the audio circuitry as well. I did notice that Asus is also slipping the required logos on this side now to keep the top cleaner looking. Not visible but also down here are all of the moisture pickup sensors that Asus included to protect your board and also they have decked the entire board out in Aura lighting including here on the bottom.

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