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The Asus Maximus Extreme motherboard PCSTATS is testing today is based around Intel's X38 Express and ICH9R chipsets. It comes absolutely loaded with features, almost too much in fact.
90% Rating: 
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PCSTATS Maximum Motherboard Overclocking Chart & Conclusions
Overclocking is alive and well! PCSTATS
has all the details you need to see at a glance to know which board is best. The
chart we've compiled below lists the highest overclocked Front Side Bus speeds
we were able to achieve while maintaining 100% stability.
The Asus Maximus Extreme motherboard is the fastest
motherboard PCSTATS has tested to date. It achieved an overclock of 545 MHz FSB
with some pretty heavy voltage going to the Intel X38 chipset.. That's mighty
fast, man just imagine the possibilities with a motherboard like this!
There's a new king! It's
name is Asus Maximus.
 The X38 Express
chipset represents Intel's best desktop motherboard chipset right now. While
overall performance might be on the same level as the mainstream P35 Express,
the X38 Express has a few trump cards, the support for the PCI Express 2.0
standard and official support for the upcoming 1600 MHz FSB standard.
Asus has taken high end motherboards repeatedly to the
extreme and has set a new high standard with its Maximus Extreme Intel X38
Express motherboard. This thing is built like a tank and comes with absolutely
everything you'd need. A quick glance at its features spec reveals that the
motherboard has dual Gigabit network cards, IEEE 1394a, standalone audio and two
eSATA ports just to mention a few. As a high end motherboard Asus also give us
hard Power/Reset/Clear CMOS buttons, a PORT 80 LCD display which is easy to
access outside the case, and the ability to monitor the temperatures of 3
devices with thermistors.
The Asus Maximus Extreme is rather pricey at $354 CDN ($354 USD, £171 GBP), but then
again when you consider high end Intel P35 Express motherboards routinely go for
$300, the Maximus Extreme isn't too bad. It's one of the few motherboards that
supports watercooling by default, and it's obviously for enthusiasts given
all the extra accessories that are included.
 The
motherboard itself is rather easy to work with, so even novice users will not
have much difficulty setting up a system with the Asus Maximus Extreme. Note the
large size of the motherboard though, you'll definitely want to use a larger
case with this thing. If you decide to equip the processor with a passive style
heatsink (like if you're using a waterblock), Asus includes a fan which installs
onto the MOSFET heatsink to keep things cool.
All things considered the Asus Maximus Extreme is very
fast. The benchmarks continually show that this board is near the top of its
class. Things would have been even better for the motherboard and its DDR3
memory if we were testing with a new 45nm Intel Core 2 Quad 9xxx based
processor. ;-) After all this platform is really designed for Intel's 45nm
processors, not 65nm.
The Asus
Maximus Extreme was most impressive in the overclocking tests and PCSTATS got
the motherboard to hit a very sweet 545 MHz FSB! That's definitely high enough
to push your processor and memory to its limits! Man I haven't been into
hard core overclocking for quite some time, but playing with the latest Intel P35
Express and X38 Express motherboards certainly makes me want to get back into
it!
The Asus Maximus Extreme is for the computer enthusiast
who has deep pockets. This is a very fast motherboard but to get the most out of
it, you'll need to equip it with high end components.
Find out about this and many other reviews by joining the Weekly PCstats.com Newsletter today!
Catch all of PCSTATS latest reviews right here.
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