ASUS Maximus III Extreme review - ASUS RC Bluetooth and ROG Connect

RC Bluetooth

The primary new features are of course an updated ROG Connect and RC Bluetooth, allowing you to remotely overclock the motherboard. RC Bluetooth is unfortunately limited in terms of supported smartphones; you'll need a phone with Windows Mobile 6 with a minimum resolution of 480x800, Symbian S60 3rd edition and Android phones revision 2.0 or newer.

Why Apple iPhone isn't supported completely baffles me. And since my HP iPAQ Smartphone is still on the Windows Mobile OS 5.1 there was no chance to check it out. This is the problem with features like this, you'll be limited in a lot of ways.

To setup an active session:

1. Launch the Bluetooth manager:

• A. Tap > Settings > Connections tab > Connection Manager
• OR B. Tap > Connection manager.

2. Then Tap Bluetooth to turn it ON/OFF.
3. Press the RC Bluetooth button on the ROG system, then ensure the mobile phone or PDA is visible and within connectable range.
4. Tap Start > Settings > Connections > Bluetooth to enter the control screen of your Bluetooth device
5. Tap Add new device to search for available Bluetooth devices. The may take a while.
6. Select RC Bluetooth from the list of detected Bluetooth devices, then select > Next >
7. Input the association key 0000 then tap Next
8. Tap COM Post > Add new COM port > RC Bluetooth > COM 0
9. Tap Programs > RC Tweak it to activate RC Bluetooth

Below you can see the smartphone output, which is certainly nice ... but to me overclocking through a mobile phone just doesn't make much sense. It's an extraordinary geeky gadget to fool around with though ! Very innovative.

ASUS includes software called ASUS ROG Connect, which actually allows you to overclock the PC from another PC, or your laptop. We explained this technology several times already in previous reviews.

If the overclocked PC crashes, you reboot and will still have the settings available at say that laptop. Change them, apply them and you are good to go.

You make the connection with the help of a special (included) bi-male USB cable (5V power line cut), and in the near future it will even be possible to utilize this connection to flash the BIOS of the motherboard, even if it died completely after say a firmware crash.

ASUS ROG Connect works nice. What's the best for me is that after a crash you reboot the crashed system, while you retained the settings on the other PC.  So you can immediately start where you left. What we'll do now is dive into a photo-shoot showing all primary hardware features.