ASUS ROG Maximus XII Extreme review - Product Showcase

Product Showcase 

ASUS ROG Maximus XII Extreme will feature a 16-phase power delivery running in a teamed mode for a better transient acclaimed response, it has two 8-pin 12 V ATX CPU power inputs. If you prefer a cord-free solution can take advantage of WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.1 connectivity. Maximus XII Extreme has a bundled ThunderboltEX 3-TR card, an Intel-certified Thunderbolt 3 add-on card that provides bi-directional speeds of up to 40 Gbps via a single cable. Additionally, an integrated Thunderbolt 3 header can support up to six devices in a daisy-chain and provide up to 100 watts of power to fast-charge devices. The motherboard follows a standard Extended ATX form factor 12 inch x 10.9 inch ( 30.5 cm x 27.7 cm ). The motherboard is located in the ROG high-end range of the desktop processor product stack. The I/O back panel reveals 3.1/3.0/2.0 ports. The audio unit has special noise-reducing capacitors and shielding on top of that Realtek chip (rebadged as ROG SupremeFX 8-Channel High Definition Audio CODEC S1220).  The board has 2 x PCIe 3.0 x16 slots + 1 x PCIe 3.0 x4  which can be arranged in these slot configurations with graphics cards:

• 1-way mode - x16 / x0
• 2-way mode - x8 / x8 

The motherboard comes with a duo 8-pin connectors. You'll get four DIMM slots that can be used for dual-channel memory. Up-to 4800 MHz supported in OC mode. Please do check compatible memory and thus the QVL (Qualified Vendors Lists). The Z490 motherboard will get you eight SATA 6 Gb/s storage ports. Combined in here is are M.2 PCI Express slots using x4 PCIe lanes, thus 32 GB/sec of performance.  You can see the audio implementation, underneath is an ASUS branded Realtek ALC 1220 codec housed for your audio.  The overall looks have improved quite a lot though, look at the heatsink design. The VRM area is totally covered as well.