ASUS ROG Maximus XII Extreme review - Introduction

ASUS ROG Maximus XII Extreme review
ROG Z490 with a new ten-core Comet Lake-S processor

Z490 has arrived, in this review, we look at the premium Comet Lake-S ten-core processor platform. We will test the motherboard with that new ten cores, twenty threads proc. A motherboard that looks gorgeous and carries some interesting features as well.

As you guys know, whenever there is a ROG label slapped in front of an ASUS product, you know it's at least high-end. For today's tested motherboard we need to advance even on that as the Maximus XII Extreme is truly is a bit of an enthusiast beast, with accompanying price tag. ASUS once again applies that familiar dark shielded design, optimized for cooling, and armed with a proper feature set build around 16 power stages and has a nice OLED dash displaying essential CPU information and post status codes. The Extreme motherboard is AURA SYNC compatible, it does offer much more LED bling compared to the other motherboards, you get an independently configurable chipset RGB ROG logo, dual x16 PCI-Express slots, extensive rear IO and power LED configurable options. ASUS kept some stuff relatively simple, ye ol' Realtek S1220 CODEC back again, the codec used for audio, an ESS ES9023P digital-to-analog converter is responsible for front-panel output, and a Texas Instruments RC4580 op-amp for high gain with low distortion. The motherboard has been fitted with the usual suspects and then some, including a 10 Gigabit based Ethernet jack, then add to that 2.5 Gigabit ethernet and then WIFI6 in the form of AX, go get you sum 'o that. Two front-panel USB 3.2 connectors area ready to accommodate a wide variety of devices. Reversible USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 Type-C ports provide ultimate flexibility and blazing data-transfer speeds. Also included is an (expensive)  THUNDERBOLTEX 3-TR card. Maximus XII Extreme supports up to four onboard M.2 drives. Two can be found on the ROG DIMM.2 module, next to the memory slots, and supports drives as long as 110 mm. The other two can be found under the aluminum heatsink cover. 

With the new Comet Lake-S you can expect a handful of K model processors predominantly become popular in demand for the PC gamer, as each and every one of the processors will offer proper gaming performance if your graphics card is fast enough. Intel is able to boost the Turbo frequencies towards that 5.3 GHz domain for the flagship processor, the Core i9 10900K. Intel is releasing these series processors initially with a spread of CPU core choices:

• Core i5-10500K (4 Core / 8 Threads)
• Core i5-10600K (6 Core / 12 Threads)
• Core i7-10700K (8 Core / 16 Threads)
• Core i9-10900K (10 Core / 20 Threads)