ROG MAXIMUS XII EXTREME (Z490) LGA1200 Motherboard Unboxing & First Impressions
The ASUS ROG MAXIMUS XII EXTREME is an EATX motherboard that means you’ll have to make sure your case can fit a wee bit longer board. The board has a backplate and has a large cutout at the bottom and behind the socket area.
ASUS continues the legacy of using their teamed power delivery design on the M12E. This board has a 16-phase VRM for the task ahead of delivering stable power to the 10-cores it has to house come launch. The VRM is cooled by a large and dense heatsink which are interconnected via heatpipe.
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This board has a large space just beside the DIMM slots. The DIMM slots themselves are rated to support up to DDR4-4800 (OC) and can support new double-density sticks at 32GB or more with ASUS touting that they can support fully populated slots with double-density sticks up to DDR4-3600. We also get the DIMM_2 slot in this area as well a large array of fan headers.
ASUS points out that their ATX+12v and EPS12V sockets use solid pins which we have no idea what it adds aside from the obvious rigidity of the ports. The connectors themselves are reinforced to give a more premium feel.
The bottom half of the board is most concealed by the shroud on the Maximus XII Extreme. If you haven’t noticed, this board only has a single x4 PCIe slot and two x16 slots. The bottom of the board is lined with fan headers and other connectors.
Removing the bottom shroud, we get access to two more M.2 slots on this board.
Moving back to the front we have 8x SATA ports and a pair of USB3.1 front panel headers and a pair of USB3.0 front panel connectors.
At the back we have a rich assortment of connectivity with USB2, USB3.1 and USB3.2 with a paid of USB3.2 Type-C and a 10G LAN and a 2.5G LAN. Last up we have the WIFI antenna connector and the audio ports.
RGB is a bit bare on this board and surprisngly not as gaudy as previous boards. The lightbars are well-placed on the IO shroud and PCH heatsink and the back with LiveDash OLED being the most visible light on this board.
