Words & Conclusion

Final Words 

ASUS offers a Z790 motherboard that most of us can only dream of. Loaded with features, performance and a platform build to be used to overclock professionally. First, let's get the elephant out of the room, pricing is $999, and here in the EE, we see listing prices of € 1399. That price has an almost insane to recommend factor. We'll leave that discussion widely open to you, as in the end if people cannot afford this, then there is no market for it, period. Even at 750 EUR, this motherboard makes you question where the heck that money is needed for other than big phat profit margins. For Z790 motherboards overall, you should look at the 200-300 EUR price bracket as pretty much all motherboards will perform more or less the same. Alternatively, a firmware-updated Z690 motherboard will also get the job done and tend to drop in price fairly soon. Put some DDR4 on there, and you're good to go with 98% of the same performance also (we have some DDR4 reviews queued for review).

Performance

We utilized a DDR5 6000 CL36 kit for this review (slightly crisper timings and frequency than the usual 5200MHz/CL40). We opted for that route because we moved to 6000 MHz for the Ryzen 7000 platform as well; while not needed, we felt that's the more fair approach to follow. The performance then, this motherboard is built and refined for just that. That goes from processor and memory performance towards WIFI6E and Ethernet with even a 2.5 and 10 Gbps link. The Extreme has a sophisticated power phase arrangement, pro overclockers will love this. Our take on PCIe 5.0 is this: at this time and stage, it's not needed for graphics cards, and while for soon-to-be-released SSDs it might be a nice gimmick, we doubt that other than sustained performance, things will be much different. For us, at this time it's not a selling point. 

DDR5 Memory

If you decide to go for a completely new platform, the elephant in the room is the cost of ownership. While DDR5 memory will get cheaper next year, you'll likely pay a price premium right now. For intel, we recommend at least 5200 MHz, however much like AMD 6000 MHz might be a nice sweet spot. Stability-wise, we had no issues, we took a random 6000 MHZ kit, and it worked beautifully. 

Energy efficiency

The Core i9-13900K is a processor rated at a staggering max 253 Watts TDP (PL2) states. That does not mean the processor runs that all the time, however for short bursts of time when needed it can pull that wattage. Overall the temperatures peak high, but only for a short amount of time. We see better overall values than what AMD is offering with the 7950X. You could cool this processor with a premium heatpipe-based cooler however we'd advise a nice LCS kit. Our processor reached 96C for a short burst of time and then settles in the 80'ies C under a full 32-threaded load. 

The conclusion

We're a little amazed at how good the 13900K and 13600K perform. And a good processoe needs a good motherboard. Of course, the Extreme has it all, but starting at USD 999, the product is limited to only some wealthy people. That's an entirely different discussion though, as we need to test the hardware, performance and features. And in that regard, the Extreme has it all. Name something relevant for the platform, and it's there, from WIFI6e to 10 GigE jacks. The VRM design is more than you could ever wish or need, and the looks are just unique with a Live Dash and that wonderful-looking Matrix. The DNA of PCIe gen 4.0 and 5.0 breathes through the platform, offering you five NVMe M2 SSDs based on a blend of these connections, all heatsink cooled. The platform will also support the very fastest memories (think 7200 MHz - we just received a kit and will soon look at that also); more on that in a separate article though. Hardware wise this puppy is excellent; we had no stability issues, the WIFI6 on the 5 GHz band is blazing fast, the 2.5/10 GigE LAN jacks perform well, 105 A Power Stages and loads of connectivity in the form of M2, SATA and USB ad thunderbolt, yeah it's called extreme for a good reason. It is reasonable to assume that this motherboard is not intended for casual gamers or users but rather for well-off computer enthusiasts with an oversized spending pocket. This is not a realistic solution for a budget-conscious crowd. However each market has its niche crowd, and the Maximus Extreme falls precisely into that category. So as a chunk of hardware it's fantastic but value for money wise there will be far better deals available. In this respect, the motherboard will no doubt outperform the competition. This is the ideal product for people who live and breathe the ASUS ROG DNA and desire only that, the best.

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