Layout

ASUS provided the Maximus III Extreme with black PCB. The memory were painted in red and the heatpipe is covered in black and red. Also the expansion slots are red. The layout in general is well thought but power-, reset and CMOS buttons could have been positioned a bit better. If you use a multi GPU solution these buttons will be covered completely.

ASUS provided the Maximus III Extreme with their latest Extreme-Engine power design which allows dynamic multi phase power management. Additionally there is a high performance digital current regulator which in combination with the new capacitors allows even better control of your CPU at the limit.

Totally you'll find four DIMM-slots on the Sabertooth. Officially supported are DDR3-2200(OC)/2133(OC)/2000/180/1600/1333/1066 with up to 16 GByte capacity. If you take a closer look at the memory banks you can see that at the end which is closer to the graphics card there is another kind of clamping mechnism. It allows you to install the memory easier even if there is already a graphics card in your system.

Southbridge as well as current converters are being held at adequate temperatures via a passive heatpipe cooling solution which consists of aluminium and copper. Thanks to their low height there is plenty of space around the CPU socket to install even todays biggest aircooler without encountering any problems.