ASUS Z490 Maximus XII Extreme Preview

Accessories Continued

One thing that we can all never have enough of, particularly with these modern power hungry hardware items, is cooling and thus fan headers. Whilst the Maximus XII Extreme has plenty of headers on the PCB itself, as we’ll soon see, ASUS also supply it with an extension card which supports more fans, as well as RGB and the ASUS Node technology.

  

Power is handled with yet more PCI Express connectors, which is nice given how terrible Molex connectors are for pushing pins out the back and all the other woes that come from a cable connector which was seemingly designed back when Mr Trevithick had a good idea on how to move a steam engine under its own power. Anything that makes building our systems smoother and less stress-inducing has to be applauded.

  

As always with a high end ASUS motherboard the Maximus XII Extreme is supplied with one of their DIMM.2 modules, letting those of you with more slender RAM requirements have some extra storage capacity.

  

If, like us, you’ve long since ditched the optical drive as our internet is now at the point that it’s significantly faster just to download everything rather than have a pile of DVDs hanging around, you’ll appreciate – as we did – that ASUS have moved their drivers and utilities to a USB drive. Hooray for that. Other manu’s take note.

  

WiFi antennas are always handy to have and the ASUS ones are always designed to look attractive on your desk as well as doing their job. A bit step up from the CB-style twigs.

  

Lastly all ASUS ROG products come with some bits and bobs that let you show off your brand loyalty. Whilst most of us might eschew stickers it’s great to have the ones that clearly indicate which of our jumble of SATA cables runs to which drive.