Now that Intel has made its next-gen Skylake-X processors official, the flagship Core i9-9980XE will find the perfect home in the beyond enthusiast motherboard from ASUS.
The new ASUS ROG Dominus Extreme is a one of the highest-end motherboards I've ever seen, with an unbelievable amount of power and features crammed into a huge Super ETX form factor motherboard. Not only does it support the 18C/36T processor from Intel, but even the new 28C/56T processor in the form of the new Xeon W-3175W processor.
ASUS' new ROG Dominus Extreme motherboard uses the same LGA 3647 socket, but it amps things up in every single other area. Here's what to expect:
- Designed for Intel Skylake-X 28 core CPU: with 32 power phases, dual 24-pin, quad 8-pin, dual 6-pin 12V power connectors that deliver industry-leading power efficiency
- Quad Strength Graphic Power: 4-Way PCI-E Gen3 x16 link supporting NVIDIA GeForce SLI, NVIDIA NVLink and AMD CrossFireX on demand
- Built for High-Performance Networking: Featuring onboard Aquantia AQC-107 10Gbps LAN, Intel I219-LM GIGABYTE LAN, Intel AC-9260 802.11ac Wi-Fi, and ROG GameFirst technology
- 5-Way Optimization featuring Auto-Tuning and FanXpert 4: Provides automatic overclocking profiles for maximum OC performance while 14 PWM fan headers ensure support for dynamic system cooling
- Unmatched Personalization: with 1.77" color LiveDash OLED, full aluminum body cover, backplate armor, and ASUS exclusive AURA Sync RGB lighting
- ROG Gaming Audio: SupremeFX S1220 teamed with Sonic Studio III, cast an aural landscape that draws you deeper into the action.
The ASUS ROG Dominus Extreme has it all... and it'll require 2 x 24-pin ATX power connectors, 4 x 8-pin PCIe power connectors, and 2 x 6-pin PCIe power connectors JUST TO POWER THE BOARD when it' fully loaded.
ASUS is allowing for 4-way GPUs with NVIDIA SLI and AMD CrossFire, so if you wanted to throw 2 x NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti graphics cards in NVLink each of them will have a full 16 lanes of PCIe 3.0 bandwidth to use on their own, with multiple M.2 drives and multiple 10GbE NICs if that tickles your fancy.
From there, you could configure the ASUS ROG Dominus Extreme with the Xeon W-3175W processor and its 28C/56T of CPU power with 4-way NVIDIA Quadro RTX 8000 graphics cards (which cost $10,000 each). The system would handle them all, and that's the entire point.
There are 12 x DDR4 DIMMs that provide support for up to 192GB of RAM, 2 x DIMM.2 slotst that will support 4 x M.2 SSDs. There's also 2 x U.2 ports and 8 x SATA III ports which offer near unlimited amounts of storage.
The VRMs have a massive heat sink and active cooling on the ROG Dominus Extreme, too. The board is also ready for custom liquid cooling, which will come into play if you're wanting to push the CPU you put into the motherboard to its limits.
ASUS has used a 1.77-inch color LiveDash OLED display with a full aluminum body cover and backplate armor, all of which is powered by ASUS AuraSync RGB lighting technology. The chipset heat sink rocks a huge ASUS ROG Eye logo.
There's also 10GbE connectivity through an on-board Aquantia AQC-107 10Gbps Ethernet connector, Intel I219-LM Gigabit Ethernet, Intel AC-9260 802.11ac Wi-Fi, and ROG GameFirst technology.
The refreshed X299-based motherboard also rocks USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-A and Type-C ports to fill out the connectivity on this beast of a motherboard.