Big and bad (in a good way)
There's been a lot of talk and movement in the pint sized PC category as of late, including the release of mini ITX and micro ATX motherboards and graphics cards like the Radeon R9 Nano. If there's an antithesis to that small form factor way of thinking, it's the new Maximus VIII Extreme from Asus ROG.
The Maximus VIII Extreme is a giant sized Extended ATX (E-ATX) motherboard measuring 12 inches by 10.7 inches. This isn't a board you can slap into an ordinary ATX chassis, let alone a SFF case.
Instead, this is a motherboard for the "go big or go home" crowd, which tend to be overclockers and gamers, both which Asus is catering to with the Maximus VIII Extreme based on Intel's Z170 Express chipset.
According to Asus, its newest flagship is built to handle "extreme overclocking." To help with that, it includes the company's OC Panel II with a 2.6-inch display for system monitoring and tweaking. The OC Panel II occupies a 5.25-inch drive bay and provides real-time monitoring of various vitals, such as CPU temperature, ratios, clockspeeds, and fan speeds. There's also an OC button.
You can also use the OC Panel II as an external console for more extreme overclocking goals. When doing so, you'll have access to features like Subzeor Sense, VGA Hotwire, Slow Mode, and a Pause switch.
There are a ton of amenities and features on this board. A look at the spec sheet reveals four DIMM slots with support for up 64GB of DDR4-3866 RAM, four PCI-E 3.0/2.0 x16 slots, two PCI-E 3.0 x1 slots, HDMI and DisplayPort 1.2 connectivity, two SATA Express ports, eight SATA 6Gbps ports, M.2 and U.2 (one each), GbE LAN, four USB 3.1 ports (three of the Type-A variety and a single Type-C port), eight USB 3.0 ports, six USB 2.0 ports, Thunderbolt 3 (Type-C), 8-channel audio, and various other odds and ends.
Asus didn't say when the Maximus VIII Extreme will be available or for how much.
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