By far the best Z490 board you can get, if you want to pay the higher price!

@Hilbert Hagedoorn there's a double "but" typo in the final words section of paragraphs = "terrific motherboard, but at the time of writing but we also realize" = Great review nonetheless as usual 🙂

thanks for the review, still looking at Z490 to build a dedicated gaming PC here's additional information out of the manual : ASUS Rog Maximus XII Extreme 1 m.2_1 shared with sata6g2 (thats 1 port only which is better than most motherboards, in most cases you lose 2 sata) 1 m.2_2 not shared ? 1 or 2 m.2 DIMM2 that's basically a pcie slot for M.2, drives take 4x cpu lanes per m.2 (gpu 8x + m2 4x + m2 4x) 6 sata regular 2 sata "E1 and E2" ?!? if it's Asmedia then it's crap (slow and only good for HDDs) if it's not asmedia then it's the MB with the most sata ports on the market card has no thunderbolt, it's a pcie card that takes lanes (so forget your DIMM2 M.2) and also requires a power cable (yuck) compared to the other models which have integrated rear IO TB3 I don't call this a feature but a downside 10 usbs (more than other models) 10+1gbit (all good, no one needs 10+2.5) m.2 placement is also bad, you don't want your m.2 above or under your gpu it's bad for thermals (+10-20°C easily) the DIMM2 also place M.2s above your gpu backplate so expect them to be heated by a 60-80°C+ furnace when gaming, I have a vertical M.2 with heatsink at the same spot on my TRX40 Creator, it's + 14°C than the bottom next to pcie slot M.2