hey guys thiago here with pc world today we're going to talk about the asus z690 maximus extreme
this is going to be the newest platform and pretty much one of the baddest motherboards
you can actually buy and i don't mean that in a negative way i mean in a very cool way albeit
a little bit expensive today we're going to talk about the specs you can expect on the motherboard
of this caliber some of the features we're going to talk about the design including the rgb
it has a really cool oled display that we're going to talk about as well as value for the
dollar it's going to be a little bit expensive are there other options that may be cheaper
or is this pretty much an ideal enthusiast motherboard we're also going to talk about
some things you should know before considering the purchase of such a product so let's get started
so intel with the 12th generation finally really strikes back pretty hard at amd with some highly
highly competitive products a motherboard like this will probably fit the best with a 12-900k
because after all when the motherboard is this expensive you really need to pair it with pretty
much the best that you can find now the tables have turned a little bit i remember myself
years ago buying the x299 rampage six extreme which you could consider sort of
like a grandfather to this type of motherboard that was on the hedt or the enthusiast platform
where you could pair a two thousand dollar cpu to it with the 18 core 7980xc now the cpu
is very very powerful but it's in the mainstream lineup and it costs considerably less than this
particular motherboard which has an msrp of 1099. so the pricing structure for premium motherboards
certainly have gone up since that it's not like this is even a threadripper or you know a zeon
class motherboard it's simply the fastest gaming type of chipset that you can get
at least until amd responds in like with their newer generation so let's get some basics out
of the way just so you understand some of these specs and some of these specs may actually be
the reason that you buy a motherboard like this first it's going to be eatx which is going to
be a larger form factor than atx so remember that if you have a smaller case not every single case
will support a motherboard like this it's a little bit bigger i actually did my build in the liam lee
desk which has ample room for something like this but i've also used eatx and other very large cases
for example even the liam lee dynamic dxl that can easily take a motherboard of this size but
just remember if you put this in a smaller case while it may fit you may have some issues with the
perimeter and putting your cabling in your wires especially the grommets coming in through the back
so that's certainly going to be sort of a build note that you want to keep in mind when working
with a larger motherboard now this motherboard will support exclusively intel alder like 12th
generation processors that means if you have anything from last generation like an 11 900k
it's not going to work on this this is lga 1700 so you'll likely want a high end 12th generation
like a 12 700 k or 12 900 k if you really want to push it to the max now one nice feature is
that many motherboards of z690 are not compatible with traditional coolers that are used to lga 1200
asus and this motherboard in particular one of the nice features is that it's completely
backwards compatible with the lga 12 000 coolers if you're going to use a water block or an aio
it has the little holes and spacing so that way you don't even have to use an adapter
that's certainly something very smart that asus did because after all nobody wants to go out
and buy a completely new cooler every time a new motherboard system comes out you're not going to
be as lucky with ddr5 because this motherboard that's the only thing that it's going to take
keep in mind on average ddr5 is still much more expensive than a dddr4 which has been around
for a lot longer and as of the current time the performance gains you're gonna get with
ddr5 really aren't all that tremendous in fact there's another important note you should know
about these motherboards in particular if you're the type that likes to fill the four slots with
ddr memory you're not really going to be able to do it with mass effect on this particular
motherboard now while it is dual channel if you want to put four dimm sticks of dddr5 ram on this
motherboard with four dimms most likely you're not going to be able to hit the advertised speed if
you want to use the xmp profile in bios it's going to be limited to sort of the base speed if you do
want to take maximum advantage of that expensive dddr5 ram most likely you're going to want to put
two higher capacity ram modules in here with two you're still going to get that dual channel and
you're not going to have any issues with being limited to the base speed going further down
the spec list let's talk about another feature that will drive people towards this motherboard
that's going to be in connectivity we're going to split this up into two sides first you have your
traditional usb usbc this motherboard has a lot of ports there certainly is nothing more frustrating
than a high-end motherboard with limited usb ports and there are many that do exist that really fall
short but this one certainly doesn't you're gonna have more than enough usb ports as well as usbc
and to make connectivity even better you're also going to have access to thunderbolt 4.
now this may not be necessarily as interesting for every user but somebody buying this motherboard
thunderbolt 4 has a tremendous amount of applications first in external storage you
can get so many different drive arrays that use thunderbolt 4 and that's just going to give you
much higher speeds than usb and if your use case calls for maybe multiple gpus or external gpus
you can plug in one of those thunderbolt 4 gpus right into the system and it's going
to work without any issue and then of course the second level of connectivity is going to be sort
of your networking now for those that do want to use wi-fi this is going to have the newer wi-fi 6e
and even though most enthusiasts even until today do prefer to have a you know
cabled ethernet connection which of course generally is going to be the fastest lowest
latency way that you want to connect but let's face it not everybody has their router in their
home right next to your computer and at least if you have a powerful router something with wi-fi 6
you're going to be able to get a considerably better wi-fi performance than we've been used
to during the last several years of course you have both 10 gigabit and 2.5 gigabit lan that you
can use not only for your internet connection if you're lucky enough to have very fast speeds but
if your use case calls for 10 gigabit networking within your you know your home or your office
you can certainly take advantage of that with much faster speeds many backup devices such as nas
which are very important and sort of that hybrid workflow of content creators and professionals
so all of those connectivity options are a major reason why maybe this price may be worth it to you
and while of course there are other motherboards that may have 98 of the features of something like
this but if your use case calls for having you know thunderbolt 4 10 gigabit networking
certain things are only going to be found in these higher end motherboards and of course don't forget
m.2 drives now these are getting faster and faster with pcie generation 4 and generation 5 which this
motherboard supports even though that technology is still in its infancy technically you can
certainly do it it's going to be the top slot but typically you're going to want to put either three
on the motherboard or you do get an accompanying sort of little dim card it almost looks like ram
and goes right up next to where the ram actually is and there you can add an additional two m.2
drives in order to just have the most amount of drives possible now a couple of nice features that
are very nice to have as the pcie slot you can now press a button and it's going to release the gpu
it's considerably easier imagine if you have this in a water cooled build or a build that
you don't have as easy access you have to get your finger in there sometimes it's a little
bit tricky especially if you like swapping parts out or you're doing different things to your build
having that button certainly can be a lifesaver and also keep in mind above that first slot where
you would have your gpu it does recess out a little bit so if you have a gpu with a very
thick backplate especially if it's one of these newer water cooled ones with the active backplate
keep in mind you may not be able to fit it there so before you choose your gpu and pair it with
this motherboard just make sure it's going to have you know a lower level smoother backplate
so you don't have any issues hitting that m.2 cover that's right above the first slot and
for those brave few amongst you that still want to do a double gpu setup perhaps nv link or sli
you will be able to this is going to have a four slot spacing so if you're looking for your envy
link bridge you're going to want to get the four slot ones and a lot of these specs so
far are things that might be unique to higher end motherboards this of course is going to
have a plethora of other features that you would expect to find on even a mid-range motherboard for
example plenty of fan connectors you can set them in the bios there's even the asus software with
the armory crate you do have pretty nice control let's talk about some of the interesting design
elements first this motherboard is extremely heavy weighing in at over three kilograms or
over six pounds definitely one of the heaviest motherboards that i have ever held now that gives
it an extremely high end feel front is full of the covers and the plating for your m.2 but it also
serves as being a very impressive aesthetic and certainly the visual and rgb effects are very
impressive on this motherboard there's something called the animate matrix display as well as a two
inch oled you can have everything from graphics here or it can even display your cpu temperatures
or various other things that relate to the information in your computer now the features and
the design i think are going to cover a lot of use cases and a lot of buyers that may be interested
in a motherboard like this then of course we definitely have performance to consider as well
typically for high-end motherboards performance becomes a little bit of diminishing returns
for example the power stages here are more than sufficient to take care of like a 12 900k even
if you overclock it you have all of the features that will give you more performance such as the
automatic overclocking or a very flexible bios if you want to manually tinker and even overclock the
cpu yourself but i will say for example there are cheaper options that may perform as good or
in some cases even better if you're just looking for strictly performance such as the z690 apex
which is a motherboard that's geared towards cpu overclocking and it may even perform a little bit
better than this not that most people would notice but you will save several hundred dollars then you
just have to look at your particular use case and see what features you can get with this type
of aesthetic with type of performance that those motherboards while they may be pretty close it may
last something like maybe 10 gigabit networking or something like that that you really need and
at the end of the day you may just really like the design aesthetic of what is an extreme motherboard
and want to go with that there's definitely nothing wrong with that very fine motherboard
if you're okay with that sort of msrp of 1099. since z690 is a new platform hopefully when the
next cpu releases you'll be able to just pop that in here and given the caliber of this
motherboard and the features that's going to be another big advantage it's a lot more
future proof than something that's not going to have quite the performance or the connectivity
capabilities of something like this so certainly has the ability of lasting considerably longer
and well into the next generation alright guys i hope you enjoyed the video remember to check
out my review on pcworld.com as well and let me know if you have any questions down below