Layout

Already at a first glance the ASUS Maximus IV Extreme-Z looks very good with its harmonic design. As always the ROG color schema is very attractive. The combination of a black PCB with red expansion slots as well as DIMM slots is very appealing especially if this is combined with the nicely shaped cooling blocks. The layout itself is well thought and there is for example enough space to install a big CPU cooler. One reason for this is that ASUS chose an extended ATX formfactor.

ASUS equipped the Maximus IV Extreme-Z with a 8+4+3 phase current supply whereas the CPU can rely on eight phases, the memory gets its own three phases and the integrated GPU gets another four phases. Furthermore ASUS implemented a digital power design which should emit less electromagnetic radiation than its analogue counterpart. Therefore ASUS claims that the system stability can be enhanced even further, especially during extreme overclocking.

Totally you'll find four DIMM-slots on the Maximus IV Extreme-Z. Officially supported are DDR3-2200+ / 2133 / 1866 / 1600 / 1333 with up to 32 GByte capacity. Because of the eATX formfactor there is plenty of space to install even big aircoolers and they shouldn't interfere with memory.

Current converters as well as northbridge are being kept at adequate temperatures via a passive heatpipe cooling solution. The southbridge got an independant cooling block which has been nicely designed. The aluminium blocks around the CPU socket are quite big. Nevertheless their not too close to the CPU socket which means that this will not compromise the installation of a big CPU coolers.