ASUS: Maximus III Extreme Motherboard
ASUS is ready with yet another socket LGA-1156 motherboard, only this one you can't pass on. The Maximus III Extreme is the company's second motherboard in its coveted Republic of Gamers series of high-end motherboards suited for gamers and overclockers, and will end up as the best ASUS has to offer for this platform. Based on the P55 Express chipset, the Maximus III Extreme seems to make use of an additional PCI-Express bridge chip to provide two x16 links. External lane switching further allows there to be four slots with x8 bandwidth. A fifth x16 slot could be wired to the PCH, being electrically x4 to accommodate other PCI-E devices.
The CPU socket is powered by a 11-phase digital PWM circuit, which uses a SuperML capacitor. The four DDR3 DIMM slots are powered by a 3-phase circuit. Apart from the main 24-pin and 8-pin CPU power connectors, there is an additional 6-pin connector. We suspect this to be a PCI-Express power connector for additional electrical stability, which could help overclocking.
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