ASUS' Republic of Gamers Maximus V Motherboard

At Computex 2012, in Taipei, Taiwan, ASUS has several products bearing the Republic of Gamers logo. One of them is a motherboard called Maximus V Extreme.

Maximus V Extreme (M5E) is part of a ROG motherboard trio, whose other two members are Maximus V Formula and Maximus V Gene. The Maximus V Extreme is powered by the Intel Z77 Express chipset and didn't show up in any leaks or announcements, unlike the other two. The platform has four DDR3 memory slots and four PCI Express 3.0 x16 slots (colored red), for multi-GPU graphics configurations (NVIDIA SLI / AMD CrossFireX). A PLX PEX8747 PCI-Express 3.0 switch is responsible for the availability of so many slots (doubles what the number of PCI Express lanes that the Z77 platfrom alone allows). That said, it is possible to have two of the slots working in x16 mode, three of them in x16/NC/x8/x8 mode and all four in x8/x8/x8/x8 mode.

With PCIe Gen 3.0 expansion capabilities out of the way, we can take a look at the other slots and ports. There's a PCI Express x16 Gen 2.0 slot there (electrical x4), along with a PCI Express x4, Thunderbolt, twelve SATA ports, a bunch of USB 3.0 headers and outputs, etc. Furthermore, ASUS tossed in a pair of Gigabit Ethernet ports, 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi, an HDMI output, USB 3.0, 8-channel HD audio, etc. Finally, for overclocking, ASUS tossed in a 12-phase Digi+ VRM, consolidated voltage-measurement points and the ROG Connect technology (lets owners overclock the board via Bluetooth from their phone).

It should not take ASUS too long to kick off shipments of the Maximus V Extreme. Unfortunately, we don't know exactly when sales will start or what price this thing will bear. Chances are it won't matter much, since high-end hardware is expensive by default, so the number of prospective buyers is fairly low regardless.

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