Overclocking
I’ll try to keep this brief. When you have a top tier motherboard, they are often extremely easy to overclock. You do get features like a better voltage controller and clock generator which have more flexibility for fine-tuning as they’ll tune in tighter increments than the cheap stuff. However, with high-end boards, you don’t really need that for a good result. The VRM’s and electrical systems are typically so good that the automatic rules in the UEFI BIOS will let you make simple adjustments and be done.
That’s precisely what we experienced with the ASUS ROG MAXIMUS XII EXTREME. Essentially, I only needed to adjust the CPU vCore and that was about it. Aside from that, I adjusted the CPU frequency multiplier, told it to apply to all cores and that was that.
As seen in the benchmarks, this resulted in an overclock of 5.1GHz all core. This was the maximum stable value I could achieve in the time allotted. Given the fine-tuning capability these boards offer, I’m sure I could squeeze out more if I had more time. The CPU runs too hot given the current-voltage of 1.4v. It would hit temperatures of 93c when loaded. This is just below idle. It might be possible to use less voltage after adjusting other values, but this is a time-consuming process of trial and error.
At 1.385v it was generally stable but crashed running BlenderBench. At 1.35v it was generally stable, but again, BlenderBench crashed it. I also saw the occasional crash in one or two other benchmark programs. VRM temperatures when overclocked read at 131-132F measured at the outside of the heat sink. It’s important to note that the heat does radiate over the I/O cover as it gets very hot. This means it’s conducting heat from the MOSFET coolers to the I/O panel cover as ASUS claims.
This is incredibly hot, but I’ve worse in the past. It’s also worth noting that it does get warmer in my office than it might for you given all the equipment I have running. Additionally, I had no airflow over the heat sinks which is a less than realistic scenario unless you are bad at building systems or something. In any case, these 14nm CPU’s are power-hungry and your VRM’s have to work fairly hard. We are seeing power draws almost like a 3950X overclocked with 6 fewer cores to give you an idea.
When it comes to memory clock, the ASUS ROG MAXIMUS XII EXTREME can handle anything you like. I only used 3600MHz Hynix modules, so they don’t clock very well. Essentially, 3603MHz was all I could get out of those. That said, if you have modules that clock well, you can do DDR4 5000MHz if your modules are good enough.
Conclusion
So, the real question is: Is this motherboard worth it? The answer is, unfortunately, complex. The answer, in short, is: “That depends.” At $750, this motherboard is far from what anyone would consider a value option. However, not everyone’s build goals or budget is the same. For some people, $750 isn’t all that unreasonable for a motherboard. There were plenty of $650+ X570 motherboards and HEDT motherboards have cost upwards of $700 or more for some time now. That cost is relative.
Obviously, most people do not buy motherboards at this price point. However, I often get asked about two things: VRM quality (as it pertains to overclocking) and 10GbE network controllers. It seems strange, but I get asked about the latter quite a lot. Unfortunately, adapters faster than 1GbE cost a lot of money. This motherboard has a massive feature set that you don’t get with other motherboards. It can handle 4x NVMe drives right out of the box. It has that OLED display and a very nice aesthetic quality to it. Some builds are as much for show as anything.
That being said, it’s a fantastic motherboard with an awesome feature set. The motherboard just worked from start to finish without any major problems. About the only thing I ran into was the DIMM.2 slot not working, but as it turns out you simply have to enable it in the BIOS because it takes extra PCIe lanes to do that. It’s a nice way to upgrade or add drives later in water-cooled builds with hard tubing. I have a feeling that’s where most of these are going to end up. DIMM.2 is very nice for that.
You also have Thunderbolt 3, and the included hardware to run that. This isn’t for everyone either, but it’s a value add for anyone who can utilize it. Furthermore, the audio solutions are very good and may appeal to some of you.
Ask someone if a high-end Mercedes or Ferrari is worth it and they’ll probably tell you that it is. Obviously, those people have more money than the rest of us who drive Honda’s and Ford’s. So this value proposition is relative. As are everyone’s needs. If you are a content creator, I can see this board having some appeal given the feature set. Some people also don’t mind spending a lot as they might run that same system for a very long time. This platform should have a fair bit of longevity to it given the broad feature set and being somewhat early in the life cycle for LGA 1200. This motherboard will also be compatible with the upcoming Rocket Lake-S in early 2021 and that should bring PCIe 4.0 support to the Maximus XII Extreme.
Final Points
The ASUS ROG MAXIMUS XII EXTREME is probably one of the nicest, most feature-rich motherboards out there right now. If you can afford it, and you can leverage its amazing feature set, then it might just be for you. If not, you’d be better served by something else in the ROG line that doesn’t cost so much. But, if you do opt for the ROG MAXIMUS XII EXTREME, I think you can rest assured you will be very happy with it. The cheapest we found online is $742.99 at B&H when it is in stock.
I’ve struggled with whether or not this motherboard deserves our gold award based on its price. However, I consider that one flaw out of an otherwise flawless and excellent motherboard. I think it deserves the gold on the basis of being one of the nicest motherboards I’ve worked with in the last couple of years and one of the best options there is for the Intel platform.
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