Asus Maximus Formula & Maximus Extreme

SATA and IDE

Like the Formula there are six 90-degree SATA ports and again they are unfortunately connectors without a locking clip for the SATA cables.

The less than wonderful JMicron JMB363 chipset is used for both eSATA and the single IDE port on-board. The JMB36x chipset is a bit notorious for its poor DVD burning performance and eSATA incompatibility for some. While we've had no trouble with a Segate eSATA drive at the bit-tech HQ, my personal Western Digital eSATA MyBook doesn't like it one bit and constantly crashes Vista (yes, I know.. "Vista").

Memory

Four DDR3 slots are sat quite a way down the board, but thankfully the slots are just high enough not to interfere with the graphics card so you can still get DIMMs out easily. As usual the slots are alternately coloured blue and white to represent both memory channels and can run up to 1,333MHz DDR3, although the BIOS also supports "OC modes" up to 1,800MHz.

Cooling

An obviously large proportion of the Extreme is dedicated to cooling - especially the large, blue Crosslinx heatsink that cooperatively cools both the southbridge and IDT PCI-Express splitter chipset. The Crosslinx block doesn't get that hot, but it still needs to be that wide because the chipsets aren't directly next to each other.


The northbridge heatsink style is slightly different to the Formula and Asus keeps the Republic of Gamers brand tag by incorporating a backlit logo slap bang in the middle of it. The heatpipe continues to the gap in the rear I/O, and connects to the power regulation heatsinks and which has a separate heatpipe. The CPU is quite enclosed with heatsinks that are 32mm and 38mm tall, while the Fusion block is 27mm tall. Therefore, it is worth checking that your CPU cooler has enough height to overcome these obstacles before you buy.

Three thermal probe pin-outs are now better placed right by a few of the 3-pin nine fan headers, instead of being randomly dotted about like with previous RoG boards.

Power Sockets and Connectivity

The power socket placements are good, and while the ATX socket is some 30mm in from the edge, it's not blocking anything. If anything the 8-pin 12V CPU power socket is a little more difficult because it's quite nestled in the upper corner but it's not like you need razor thin fingers to get to the clip, like we found with the Gigabyte GA-X38 boards.


Generally the pin-outs are also very well placed all around the edges of the board, except for a single pair of USB pin-outs which managed to sneak between PCI and PCI-Express x16 slot. The power and reset switches now find themselves half way up the board instead of at the bottom like the Formula, and there's the same switch for the rear I/O clear CMOS button again.