Asus goes Extreme with 2nd Maximus board

Another R.O.G. board from Asus has appeared online and although we didn't think too highly of the Maximus Formula that we found some pictures of here, the Maximus Extreme looks like the real deal. Don't think for a moment that this is the same board, as it's not even using the same PCB. We'd also dare to say that this board is using a chip from IDT to split the PCI Express lanes, since the board has three x16 slots, something that the Formula lacks.

If you look carefully you'll notice that the board has a lot of digital switches between the two blue x16 PCI Express slots and there are a further two above the white x16 slot. It seems to make sense and explains why the ICH cooler is so big. The general layout of connectors looks very similar at first, but Asus has moved around quite a few things. The floppy connector is further in on the board and the Extreme is also about 1.5cm wider than the Formula.



The onboard power and reset buttons have also been moved up and are now behind the IDE connector, just below the floppy connector. Asus has also added dual eSATA ports to the Extreme. The power regulation is similar but the cooling looks much better and Asus has fitted a watercooling option onto the X38 chipset heatsink, although it's very different to that one seen on the Blitz Extreme.

There are some rumors speculating that this is Asus' X48 based boards, but as for now we have no information with regards to this. We're going to try to get in touch with Asus and find out more details, but until we do, you're going to have to make do with some additional pictures of the board which you can find here