The Maximus IX Code has been equipped with ASUS’ "armor", which consists of a plastic cover on the front and a sturdy metal plate on the back. Apart from that there is the AURA feature, which allows you to change the illumination of the board from within Windows. There are also three full-sized and metal-strengthened PCIe slots, which have been wired using 16/8/8 lanes - top to bottom. Between the first and the second full-sized PCIe slot there are two slots distance providing plenty of room for graphics cards to breathe even in multi-GPU configurations.