The Extreme board supports
3x Type A ports and a single
Type-C port. How useful this
is remains to be seen as one
would imagine an additional
Type-C port would serve a
better purpose. Alas, it is what
it is and perhaps at some point
there may be a converter that
end users can buy to change
one type to the other.
If you re-call, some X99
motherboards from ASUS
featured an M.2 to U.2
converter. This time, instead
of an add-in card, this U.2
port is built right on to the
motherboard and you need
not sacrifice your M.2 slots
to use it. Obviously it uses
PCI-Express lanes and as
you can imagine you will lose
some SATA port connectivity.
However, it should not
interfere with the M.2 slot at
all. Oddly enough, there’s only
one such slot which is unlike
all the other high end boards
that seem to be competing
for how many of these can
be placed on a board. Again,
this should not be an issue for
26 The OverClocker Issue 36 | 2015
most users, but those who are
looking at setting up M.2 based
RAID arrays, may need to seek
out the DELUXE board rather.
Given that you receive a
motherboard with more full
length PCI-Express slots. You
would be forgiven for thinking
this has 4-way SLI support, but
it does not. You may run 4-way
CrossfireX of course, but SLI is
a no because there is no
switching chip that would allow
all the cards in the system to
operate at a minimum of x8
lanes. Again, not a big deal as
if you really want to run 4-way
SLI you should consider the
X99 platform.
As with all high end Maximus
motherboards, ASUS has
included the ROG Panel. This is
largely unchanged from what
you’re familiar with and if you
have one already, you can use
it on this board, at worst only
needing a firmware update
to support the MAXIMUS VIII
Extreme. Previously I covered
what this panel does in the
Rampage V Extreme review
so I’ll not repeat it again,
suffice to say that this panel is
probably worth $100 by itself
given all that it allows you
to do. The addition of the OC
panel does go a long way into
justifying the price premium
over the Hero board.
As we are primarily
concerned with the
overclocking aspect of the
board. It is safe to state that
the EXTREME does everything
the GENE and HERO board
can at the very least. In this
particular review, it proved
difficult to truly push the CPU
to the limit, not because of the
motherboard, but because
after several failed attempts at
de-lidding the CPUs (this was
prior to der8auer’s De-Lid Die
mate) it became uneconomical
to invest further into this
endeavor. Suffice to say, with
the IHS kept as is from the
retail chip. The Maximus VIII
Extreme dialed in a healthy
5.6 ~ 5.7GHz. Perhaps higher
numbers were possible, but
without de-lidding the CPU,