ASUS Z270 Maximus IX Extreme Preview

Up Close cont

These first two images still make us do a double take and we have it in front of us. Have you ever looked at a motherboard and begrudged having to also invest in a ton of fan extension cables and a controller? Do you wish that your front-mounted radiator could go push-pull but the lack of headers is holding you back? Welcome to the Maximus IX Extreme. A motherboard with a massive, barely believable, 8 fan headers on the leading edge of the motherboard, as well as two dedicated waterpump headers and a water flow monitoring point. Sure you could, theoretically, run the Extreme with air cooling, but why on earth would you? For a start the Code or Formula do 99% of the things that this does in that scenario, yet at a significantly smaller investment. This is an Extreme, water cooling is a minimum. And, as you can see from the slow mode dip-switches, LN2 and DICE are well catered for. 

Much like a few motherboards we’ve seen recently it appears that it is definitely time to say goodbye to the “good idea never used” SATA Express, as the Maximus IX Extreme is SATA III only when it comes to the ‘slow’ end of the storage scale. We have to say that we love the sideways mounted 24 pin ATX power. We were only saying the other day in our Crosshair retrospective how it was something we’d love to see make a return and here it is. Our cable-tidying obsession thanks you.

Of course why you’re really here is that waterblock, and here it is in situ. Despite the excellence of third-party solutions they always have to have a slightly generic design to appeal to the largest possible amount of people. This has no qualms about being for the Maximus IX and looks the part, blending in perfectly with the overall theme.

We’ll be back with a full review soon, but in the meantime let us know what you think on the OC3D Forums.