ASUS ROG Maximus Z790 Extreme Review

A Closer Look

When it comes to aesthetics, there’s no doubt about it, ASUS really created a beast here. It’s an extremely heavy motherboard as it has a borderline alarming amount of armour, thick backplates, and well, just a lot of money on it in general. The build quality is very robust though, and frankly, I would have expected anything less given the astronomical price tag! Of course, it is also E-ATX, so it’s quite a bit larger than a normal ATX board, further adding to the overall weight.

A large percentage of that weight is coming from the VRM heatsinks, which are located above, to the right and below the CPU mount, with multiple stacked layers, thick thins and cross cuts that further increase the surface area. There’s even a massive heatpipe linking all three for more even heat dissipation.

The VRM configuration is brutally over-engineered, with a 24 + 1 teamed power stage design, which are each rated for 105A. Plus, they’re using the best of the best when it comes to high-quality alloy chokes and capacitors. If you’re interested in truly extreme overclocking, LN2, world records and all that jazz, this is a real contender to get that done. For everyone else, you can no doubt run your flagship CPU at 100% all day long without concern.

The motherboard features four reinforced DDR5 DIMM slots, ROG DIMM.2 mount, which provides the board with two additional PCIe 4.0 M.2 slots.

The lower half of the board is packing plenty of hardware too. I’ve removed the armour so you can actually see it though! Below the CPU, there’s a PCIe 5.0 M.2 mount, and two PCIe 4.0 M.2 slots all with front and back heatsinks. With DIMM.2 that gives us 5 x M.2 mounts. There’s a pair of PCIe 5.0 x16 slots, with the top on featuring the quick-release lever for ease of use. While in the bottom left, there’s the mighty ROG SupremeFX ALC4082 codec with ESS ES9218 Quad DAC that can operate at up to 32-Bit/384 kHz.

Built-in power controls, BIOS readout, and Flexkey, all make this a great motherboard to use on an open bench.

The rear I/O is awesome though, with a full setup of gold-plated audio jacks and SPDIF out. There’s blisteringly fast WiFi 6E, 2.5GbE LAN and the much more extreme 10 GbE LAN from a Marvell AQtion controller. There are plenty of USB ports too, including USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 Type-C, eight additional USB 3.2 Gen 2, and Thunderbolt 4 USB. There’s also front and rear support for 60W Type-C charging.