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ASUS Maximus Extreme

ASUS brings us Intel’s latest and greatest X38 chipset in the form of the Maximus Extreme. In the past the DDR3 offerings have fallen a little short when it comes to their overclocking prowess. Does the Maximus Extreme have what it takes to catch enthusiasts’ attention?

Introduction

ASUS is one of the most popular manufacturers of enthusiast and do it yourself motherboards in the business today. ASUS is a leading manufacturer of quality motherboards with a number of excellent models under their belts over the years and they’ve produced a number of outstanding boards here recently, especially those in their Republic of Gamers lineup. ASUS has again broadened the lineup of Republic of Gamers motherboards with the Maximus Extreme, Maximus Formula, and Maximus Formula SE. (And in likely ASUS fashion you will not be able to reach the ROG website linked previously because while ASUS builds some of the best motherboards in the world, they apparently don’t use them in their servers as their website accessibility and speeds have sucked for years now. It is hard to take a company seriously that has yet to come close to getting a Web presence done somewhat right. Anyway, just pray you don’t need to download a big driver.) In this article we will focus on the Maximus Extreme which is the DDR 3 offering. Like the Maximus Formula SE, the Maximus Extreme uses ASUS’ Fusion block hybrid heat-pipe/water block cooling system for the north bridge.

The ASUS Maximus Extreme supports the latest Intel ® Core™2 Extreme Quad-Core / Core™2 Duo / Intel® Pentium® Extreme and Intel® Pentium® D processors. Following industry trends, the Maximus Formula only requires a few components to create a fully functional machine. The required components are: LGA775 CPU, DDR 2 memory, power supply, drives and a video card. ASUS Integrated the following components into the ASUS Maximus Formula: 1 ATA 133 port, 1 floppy port, 6 SATA ports, 2 eSATA ports, 12 USB ports (6 ports on the backplane, and 6 ports available via 4 headers supporting 2 ports each), 2 IEEE1394 ports (1 via header, 1 via backplane), 2 gigabit Ethernet supports, SPDIF out and one PS/2 mouse port. ASUS’ more recent boards under the Republic of Gamers brand have no PS/2 keyboard ports on them, the same as we saw abit do years ago, albeit maybe a little too soon.

Main Specifications Overview:

Detailed Specifications Overview:

Packaging

The packaging is identical to the packaging used for the rest of the Republic of Gamers motherboard line only differing in board photos and text printed on the box. The board is secured in the usual plastic shell and a second box is inside the larger box with the included accessories packaged in it. Amongst the included items are one driver DVD, manual, quick start guide, zip ties, hose clamps, LCD Poster, 1 ATA cable, 1 floppy cable, and for good measure they’ve included the hit game S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl in the bundle as well.

Board Layout

The layout of the ASUS Maximus Extreme is rather typical of ASUS. The layout is good, but not perfect. The CPU area is a bit crowded and the memory slots are located too close to the video card slots. The Maximus Extreme uses only solid electrolytic capacitors.

The CPU area seems a bit crowded at first glance and that’s because it is. I was not able to fit the popular Apogee GT waterblock to this board due to the placement of the heat pipes and cooling fins.

The board has the usual 4 240-pin DDR2 DIMM slots in a standard two by two arrangement however they are a little farther left than you normally on most boards. Unfortunately the location of the memory slots means you’ll probably need to remove your video card in order to install memory modules.

The north bridge is located to the left of the CPU socket as usual and it’s cooled by ASUS’ own Fusion Block System which is a hybrid heat-pipe/water block cooling solution. Running air cooling alone sometimes leaves the north bridge excessively hot while overclocking. It seems to get hotter than its DDR2 counterpart. While water cooled there is a major improvement in the temperature of the Fusion block system.

The south bridge is located in front of the secondary PCIe x16 slot. This is cooled by the Fusion Block system as well as the system of heat pipes is all interconnected. Fortunately the block is nice and flat over the south bridge so there shouldn’t be any problems with large video cards in this slot.

The ASUS Maximus Formula has three PCIe x16 slots. The board supports running two of these in an 8x8 mode with one running at x16 speeds or two running in a 16x16 configuration with the third running at x1 speeds via the Crosslinx chip. These slots are also PCI Express 2.0 compliant as well and are backwards compatible with 1.0 and 1.0a standards. There are two PCIe x1 slots, one of which is compatible with the included Supreme FX II audio card and finally two legacy PCI v2.2 slots.

The ASUS Maximus Extreme has 1 PS/2 mouse port, 2 RJ-45 ports, 2 eSATA ports, 1 IEEE1394 port, one SPDIF out ports, and 6 USB 2.0 ports on the backplane. There is also a connector for the external LCD Poster module. Also since we sometimes get requests for shots of some boards lit up in total darkness, I thought I'd add one for kicks. Here you can see the Republic of Gamers logo that ASUS added to the north bridge cooling solution.