In light of the release of the X38 chipset from Intel, ROG (Republic of Gamers) recently launched three models of the Maximus series. The first two being the Maximus Formula and Maximus Formula SE, while the third one is known as the Maximus Extreme, which is what we are reviewing in this article.
If you ever buy an ROG board, rest assured that you will get all the tools you need to do some overclocking or some hardcore gaming. Most of the accessories provided are not unheard of, though ASUS has added some new toys to the inventory. ASUS’s new fusion block cooling solution is not only passive, but is able to add a waterblock to the circuit. So it’s not surprising that they’ve included some tubes and fittings at your disposal. Another addition is the LCD Poster, which displays information whenever an error occurs with one of the hardware during POST (Power-On-Self-Test).
The design of the cooling circuit has changed somewhat, and ASUS has added an LED logo of ROG on one of the blocks, adding to the cool factor. However, the new design has limited the space surrounding the CPU socket. While some heatsinks are able to fit onto the CPU, it is actually very difficult to tighten the lock of the CPU cooler as the copper block gets in the way. ASUS have gone with a larger and flatter heatsink for the Crosslink chip, so some of the components on the board have been relocated to accommodate the change. The mobo power connector and the floppy connector have been moved further in, while the USB and FireWire headers are now adjacent to the SATA ports. The power and reset buttons are also relocated nearer to the DIMM sockets. For the Maximus Extreme, you get not two, but three PCIe x16 slots and all of them run at full 16 lanes. If you don’t already know, Crosslink allows two cards to run at 8x/8x instead of the 16x/4x combination; only the last two PCIe slots are affected. But one can only imagine why there is a need for THREE video cards, then again…there’s THE PC killer game - Crysis.
Aside from the Fusion Block System, Crosslink and the Extreme Tweaker, the board comes with some new features, such as the ability to overclock the memory to a whopping 1,800MHz. Users will be able to overclock their CPUs according to presets using the CPU Level Up feature, monitor voltages and temperatures, and many more.
We really wanted to try setting up three cards for curiosity’s sake, but we didn’t have two of the same cards. With that, we recorded a score of 8,111 on PCMark. The board achieved 7,538 for CPU, 5,997 for memory, 11,662 for graphics and 5,472 for HDD.
Every time ASUS sends a mobo from the ROG series, we get nothing but excellent features, more utilities to aid in overclocking, and top-notch performance. As with any high-end board, expect a jaw-dropping price. And if you decide to go with three cards, you’ll probably have to live on grass for a few months.
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