ASUS ROG Maximus X Apex review - Introduction

ASUS ROG Maximus X APEX motherboard
Going from Nice to Gorgeous

We review the lovely looking ASUS ROG Maximus X Apex motherboard. A € 349,- costing Z370 motherboard style for the high-end PC crowd. It has distinctive looks, PCB cutouts and some of the most spectacular looks thanks to a very sophisticated RGB LED system. The motherboard has been fitted with the kit, including a two Ethernet jacks, and drum-roll ... one being fitted with an Aquantica AQC108 5G LAN jack (yay). Also with the help of what is called the DIMM2 slot, you may house two M.2 SSDs. We'll check that out later though. The Maximus X APEX, however, is about two things really, performance and looks.

Coffee Lake represents the new 8th generation desktop processors from Intel, including the new mainstream six-core part. A product line that is the direct answer to, and effect from what AMD has been pursuing aggressively in the desktop processor channel. With this first 'mainstream' step from Intel, they will offer 6-core processors. These will need to be paired with a new motherboard chipset and thus motherboard, the Z370 based ranges. With the introduction of Ryzen and more recently the announcement of Threadripper processors, the processor market and channel has been turned upside down, and Intel is slowly waking up from its S3 deep-sleep state finally realizing that they cannot keep serving just quad-core processors in the mainstream, as they have been doing for subsequent years now. AMD gave Intel a serious wake-up call and as such, they needed to step up, significantly. Intel’s primary processor business has been releasing and refreshing quad-core processors for many years combined with high-margin, spicy priced E type (e.g. Broadwell-E / Haswell-E / Skylake-X) processor releases every now and then. You can't really blame Intel either as there simply was no competition - hence they had no rush and have been relaxed all the way for years now. Intel did anticipate Zen (or Ryzen), but the AMD consumer aimed Threadripper 16-core and Naples server segment 32-core made Intel step up its game a notch as they've shifted into a higher gear ever since Ryzen was released. Over the summer Skylake-X processors have been announced with limited releases and availability for the highest core count procs. Skylake-X, however, is available in good quantities for the 10-core and 12-core parts, but these start at 999 Euros for the 10-core version. There is an Intel Core i7-7800X hexa-core available in the sub-400 Euro range though, but it needs to be tied to an X299 motherboard, but these start at 350 euros. Ergo, AMD is outflanking Intel in any and every product segment, price wise. This now changes with the Coffee Lake generation of processors that have up-to six-cores alongside more affordable Z370 motherboards
 

 
In this review, we look at the ASUS ROG Maximus X Apex. The board, as stated, is positioned in a more high-end region and has distinctive black looks, PCB cutouts and incredible RGB LED elements, stuff you will need to like of course. But I certainly did. Have a peek and then let's head onwards into the review my man.