We would like to introduce you to the ASUS ROG Maximus XI Extreme. ASUS and their Maximus series of boards have been synonymous with gamers, overclockers and overall enthusiasts over the many years since ROG or Republic of Gamers came to be. However, some things have changed as the extreme overclocking or XOC community has evolved and so has the hardware. It used to be that you got a Maximus extreme board and it was the best for LN2 and benchmarking usage but could also be used for gaming while the Formula moniker was more for highly featured liquid cooling and gaming enthusiasts.

Now over the past few generations highly specialized boards such as a ROG addition of the APEX board which is specially built for optimal overclocking performance with shortest memory traces via single DIMM per channel designs. Normally APEX models arrive a little later in some cases but in the Z390 Generation, we see a mATX Gene offering being built very much like an APEX part. So now I do question if there will indeed be an APEX for this gen. BTW it’s worth noting I am really excited to lift the veil on the Gene board to see exactly what its capable of.