Review: ASUS Maximus IV Extreme-Z
Published by Marc Büchel on 01.09.11Page:
Conclusion
| Allgemein | + | - | |
| At a first glance ASUS leaves a very
good impression with its Maximus IV Extreme-Z. Once more we very much
liked the
ROG color scheme. Every time ASUS decides to create a ROG product
it's going to be beautiful. Furthermore the board is also very well
equipped. There are lots of USB ports and it also comes with four PCI-Express x16 slots.
We think it's a reasonable desicision to put all the components the
Extreme-Z comes with onto an extended ATX board. Everything else would
have led to a mess regarding the layout. What we didn't like it the fact that the board sometimes refuses to find the USB keyboard although it's connected. This is an issue which should be resolved as quickly as possible. |
- Design - eATX Overclocking Board - 4 x PCI-Express x16 |
- USB keyboard compatibility issues | |
| Layout | + | - | |
| Generally the ASUS P8B WS's Layout has been well thought. Once more practical are the angled SATA connectors as well as the power- and reset-buttons which can be found on an additional diagnosis card. Furthermore it is possible to install a total of four graphics cards. Unfortunately one can only build a CrossFire multi GPU setup and therefore your limited to applications which cause high open GL loads. A closer look at the area around the CPU socket reveals that there is plenty of space to install any big CPU cooler. The fact that the cooling blocks are much smaller makes it easy to install a CPU cooler too. the placement of the third PCI-Express slot isn't perfect. We would have love to see it as the second last expansion sloat onboard but in with the P8B WS it is the last and therefore when a dual slot video card is being installed in the last PCI-Express x16 slot it will cover the connectors at the bottom edge of the board. Unfortunately as we already phrased out in the text above there are some issues if you focus on the CPU socket. The aluminium blocks which keep the current converters cool can cause compatibility problems with high end CPU coolers. Another thing is the DIMM slots. They are also very close to the socket. In this case memory which is equipped with big heatspreaders can also collide with big aircoolers. | - Angled SATA connectors - Power/Reset-Button onboard - Debug display - PCI-Express x16 not last expansion slot |
||
| Performance | + | - | |
| This board really was able to convice regarding performance. Therefore in a lot of benchmarks it's been able to score very well. In SuperPi, SiSoft Sandra as well as 3DMark Vantage you often find this thing leading our charts. Only WPrime and 3DMark 11 CPU could have really been better. | - SiSoft Sandra - 3DMark - SuperPi |
- wPrime | |
| BIOS | + | - | |
| Focussing only on the settings, overclocking definitely is home territory for the Maximus IV Extreme-Z. Furthermore we also reached the maximum clock speed of our test CPU, which is 5'200 MHz. Looking at the Maximus IV Extreme-Z's EFI BIOS we see that it's been well structured. You'll quickly find all the different settings and it also resets itself if you should set values that do not work. Generally the ASUS EFI-BIOS are very nice and even the graphics are stunning. | - Well structured BIOS - UEFI-BIOS | ||
| Recommendation | + | - | |
| If you want to build a high end comptuer or gaming system then the ASUS Maximus IV Extreme-Z most definitely will be a good choice. Sure for overclocking this board is equally good. The price point of this board with CHF 352.- (est. EUR 293.-) is quite steep. | -
High-End - Gaming - Overclocking |
- Desktop-PC | |
| Rating | |||
| We give the ASUS Maximus IV Extreme-Z four out of five stars. We really didn't like that sometimes USB keyboards are simply not reconized. | |||
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Author: m.buechel@ocaholic.ch Copy edited and translated: m.buechel@ocaholic.ch c.ney@ocaholic.ch
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