ASUS Maximus VI Extreme Review

ASUS Maximus VI Extreme review

Test Setup

ASUS Maximus VI Extreme
Intel Core i7-4770K
Club3D HD7970 Royal Ace
Corsair Vengeance Pro 2400MHz
Corsair AX1200i
Corsair Neutron GTX
Corsair H100i
Windows 7 x64 

Overclocking

This is the big test. An extreme motherboard, one that costs twice as much as any other we’ve looked at, really needs to deliver here. To get things up and running firstly we needed to obtain a custom BIOS from ASUS, because the supplied one was bugged to say the least. We’d unhesitatingly suggest you update your BIOS before beginning to use the M6E. It’s something you should always do, but doubly so here.

Even with a special BIOS the loadline calibration was anything but stable. We saw a lot of variance in voltage which is particularly problematic given that the Maximus is designed for running on the ragged edge and that the i7-4770K is quite a hot chip in the best of scenarios.

   ASUS Maximus VI Extreme review

If anything we’re slightly disappointed with our results. Of course the Maximus is designed for immense overclocks rather than just the best you can do on air (or at least a H100), so the fact it requires a higher voltage than we saw from, for example, the MSI GD65 even at just 4.8GHz doesn’t bode well for how the motherboard will perform under more extreme overclocks.

ASUS Maximus VI Extreme review           

Power Draw

At the wall the Maximus VI Extreme is very similar to all of our other Z87 test setups.

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