Asus Maximus IV Extreme Motherboard Review

The ROG Maximus IV Extreme is a very unique motherboard that combines many of the enthusiast features that overclockers want with the mainstream stability that gamers and computer users demand.  The majority of that comes from the technology that ASUS has included with virtually all of their mainstream motherboards.  Digi+ VRM is a great example of a power delivery system that can be tuned for power efficiency or unleashed to support a wide variety of overclocking stresses.  

Speaking of power, early in this review we commented on how when you buy a ROG motherboard you not only get an excellent enthusiast platform for gaming, tweaking and overclocking but you also get a huge community to support you along the way.  Nothing speaks to that more than the overclocking guide we found specific to this motherboard.

Board layout is quite extensive for a P67A motherboard and it has to be to support 3-way video card setups.  To increase performance Asus has included the NF200 bridge chip but implemented it on only two of the four slots.  That way if you are running 2-way SLI or Crossfire you're using bandwidth directly from the CPU.  It isn't until you add a third card that the NF200 chip is accessed, and even then only on the two secondary video cards.

Overall performance was great with the Maximus IV Extreme due in part to the factory overclock.  Out of the box we noticed that our 2600K was running at 3.8Ghz with the default settings.  As you can expect the extra 300Mhz did lead to higher than expected benchmark numbers and no adverse effects.  The overclock did go away once we enabled the XMP profile so keep that in mind when you're tuning things and are wondering where your Mhz went.

Red and Black Color Scheme
PCI Express Disable Switches
Excellent BIOS Support
3-Way GPU Support
Support Community
LN2 Switch for ColdBug
Lots of ROG Features

Small PWM based on competition
Heatspreader on back of board gets quite warm