ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme review: A truly premium motherboard

Intel recently launched the first 12 generation Core processors and their partners launched new motherboards based on the Z690 chipset too. One of the best is the ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme, a premium motherboard that comes with an “extreme” amount of features, bundled accessories, and components of the highest quality. Priced at well over 1000 USD, it promises top-notch performance for PC enthusiasts and gamers. We’ve had the pleasure to use and test it for a while, and now we’d like to tell you more about what it’s like in real life and what to expect from it. If you’re curious and want to see the ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme in action, read this review:

ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme: Who is it good for?

The ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme is the motherboard you should buy if:

• You want the best money can buy
• You want a gorgeous motherboard for your brand new high-end Intel Alder Lake processor
• You want to future-proof your computer

Pros and cons

These are the best things about the ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme:

• It uses Intel’s latest and most powerful Z690 chipset
• It supports PCI Express 5.0 and PCI Express 4.0
• It works with the latest and fastest DDR5 RAM
• It offers a lot of M.2 and SATA ports for storage
• There are many USB ports, including Thunderbolt ones
• It bundles high-end 10 Gigabit and 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet
• The wireless chip supports Wi-Fi 6E
• The build quality is premium, to say the least
• The design is impressive, and we especially love the OLED display and the AniMe Matrix
• Its VRM offers up to 105A of power, so overclocking your CPU is definitely in the cards

The only thing that’s not so great about the ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme is its price, which is also extreme!

Verdict

The ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme is definitely one of the best Z690 motherboards. If you intend to build a high-end computer based on a 12th Gen Intel Core processor and want the best for it, this motherboard should be the one you buy. It delivers excellent performance, beautiful design, and premium build quality. The Maximus Z690 Extreme is also extremely rich in features, including incredible personalization options, as well as components and chips of the highest quality for everything from power delivery and connectivity to storage options. If your budget is generous and spending over 1000 USD for your new motherboard doesn’t faze you, the ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme is the way to go.

Unboxing the ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme

The ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme is a high-end premium motherboard and that’s obvious just by looking at its box. It arrives in a fairly large box made of hardened cardboard, painted in Republic of Gamers’ black and red. On its top side, you get to see the full name of the motherboard, printed in silver, as well as some details about it and its features. The box of the ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme Inside the box, you find the motherboard tucked inside an antistatic bag. First impression: gorgeous! The mainboard is protected by an antistatic bag Under the mainboard, there’s a rich compendium of bundled accessories and documents: cables (one 1-to-3 ARGB splitter cable, one 1-to-2 ARGB splitter cable, two 1-to-4 fan splitter cables, one RGB extension cable, three ROG weave SATA 6G cables, four SATA 6Gb/s cables, one 3-in-1 thermistor cables pack), a ROG Fan Controller (one ROG Fan Controller, one Fan EXT PWR cable, one ARGB input cable, one USB input cable, one ROG Fan Controller 3M mounting tape, a Fan Controller manual), ROG DIMM.2 with Heatsink (one ROG DIMM.2 with heatsink, one M.2 pad for ROG DIMM.2, two M.2 screw package for ROG DIMM.2), one ROG True Voltician and four cables for it, ASUS Wi-Fi moving antennas, one M.2 SSD screw package, one Q-connector, one ROG CLAVIS DAC, one ROG graphics card holder, one ROG key chain, ROG logo plate stickers, a ROG screwdriver, some other ROG stickers, a ROG thank you card, a thermal pad package for M.2 heatsink, a USB drive with utilities and drivers, and the user guide. ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme: What’s inside the box Unboxing the ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme makes you feel like you’ve just bought a premium, top-of-the-line motherboard. This is a high-end product with an extremely rich bundle of accessories.

Hardware specifications and design

The ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme is not just your “average” high-end motherboard. It’s a very expensive motherboard that, according to its Extreme moniker, gives you all the things you would expect from a premium device and also many others that you didn’t even know you wanted. Most of the motherboard is colored dark, and most of its inner electronics like circuits or capacitors are hidden from view, covered by elegant, gorgeous heatsinks, plates, and the head-turning AniMe Matrix display. This is a large and completely programmable LED panel (with 222 LEDs!) that covers the input/output shield, which you can use to display images or animations you like, or even make it react to the music you play on your computer. Let’s talk Sci-Fi, right? 🙂 The ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme motherboard The 24+1 voltage regulator module (VRM) is covered by large heatsinks and can deliver up to a massive 105A, which tells you right from the start that you should have absolutely no issues overclocking any 12th Gen Intel Core “Alder Lake” processor. Even the M.2 drives that you’ll probably install on this motherboard are protected and cooled by huge heatsinks with special textures and designs that hide the SSDs from view and make the motherboard look more like a unified device. Large radiators cover the VRM The power is delivered to the VRM by three EPS connectors: a standard 24-pin ATX main power connector found along with others under a dedicated plate on the right side of the motherboard, and two 8-pin connectors positioned on the top-left of the mainboard, above the I/O panel. Perspective view of the ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme As the ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme is designed for the latest generation of Intel processors (12th Gen), it sports the brand new LGA1700 socket. This socket is only used by Alder Lake processors, so you can’t reuse an older Intel Core CPU from the 11th or 10th generation with this motherboard. The only processors that work on the ASUS ROG Maximum Z690 Extreme right now are the Intel Core i9-12900K and KF, Intel Core i7-12700K and KF, and Intel Core i5-12600K and KF. The CPU slot on the ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme As for memory support, the ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme gives us four DDR5 DIMM slots, which can accommodate a maximum capacity of 128GB. The RAM modules you use can have a default frequency of 4800MHz, but you can also use DDR5 running at speeds higher than 6400MHz in overclock mode. The ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme has four DIMM slots Besides being able to use DDR5 memory, this Z690 chipset-based motherboard also offers support for other new technologies like PCIe 5.0. The processor is linked to two PCIe 5.0 x16 slots, and the Z690 chipset to one PCIe 3.0 slot. The PCIe 5.0 slots can be used in x16 or x8/x8 modes: most people will probably use only one graphics card in x16, though. Closer view of the ASUS ROG Z690 Extreme motherboard Then there are no less than five M.2 SSD slots: the one connected to the CPU lanes supports PCIe 5.0 x4 mode and can have any form factor (2242/2260/2280/22110) but shares its lanes with the second PCIe 5.0 slot, so if you use this M.2 slot, the secondary PCIe 5.0 slot is disabled. The second M.2 slot that’s also linked to the processor lanes supports PCIe 4.0 in x4 mode. On the motherboard’s Z690 chipset, the PCIe lanes allow for three M.2 slots that all work on PCIe 4.0 x4. However, two of them are available only if you attach ASUS’ proprietary riser called the ROG DIMM.2, which is a sort of adapter that fits two M.2 solid-state drives and plugs into a RAM slot. ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme uses the Z690 chipset and offers PCIe 5.0 The ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme impresses in terms of connectivity also. For wired connections, you get one Intel chip that supports speeds up to 2.5Gbps and one high-speed Marvell chip that can transfer data at up to 10Gbps! Both Ethernet ports are protected by Anti-surge LANGuard, which protects them from power spikes, keeps the signal clean, and reduces the chance of errors. For wireless, you get Intel Wi-Fi 6E which can work on the 6GHz frequency band and allows for seven extra 160MHz channels! In terms of audio, the ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme comes with ASUS’ ROG SupremeFX 7.1 Surround Sound High Definition Audio CODEC ALC4082. It supports stereo playback at up to 32-bit/384 kHz and up to 120 dB SNR (Signal-To-Noise ratio), 113 dB SNR recording input. Furthermore, you also get an external ROG Clavis (ESS SABRE9018Q2C) DAC that you can plug into a USB-C port and connect your headphones to it for an audiophile-grade listening experience. The input/output panel on the ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme Besides network and audio ports, on the I/O panel, you also get an HDMI port, a Thunderbolt 4 USB Type-C port, a USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 Type-C port, seven USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A ports, and one USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C port. If you ever need them, there’s also a BIOS FlashBack and a Clear CMOS button. In terms of fans and cooling, the motherboard includes many connectors: one 4-pin CPU Fan header, one 4-pin CPU OPT fan header, two 4-pin Chassis Fan headers, two 4-pin Radiator Fan headers, two W_PUMP+ headers, one WB_SENSOR header, one 2-pin Water In header, one 2-pin Water Out header, and one 3-pin Water Flow header. Additional USB headers are also available if you want to connect them to your PC case: one Intel Thunderbolt 4 port (USB Type-C), one USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 connector (which also supports USB Type-C), two USB 3.2 Gen 1 headers (that support up to four USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports), and two USB 2.0 headers (for another four USB 2.0 ports). Bottom view of the ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme If you like RGB, know that the ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme supports ASUS Aura and, besides the built-in LED lights on the motherboard, you also get a 6-pin ARGB Gen 2 header that can split the signal into two ARGB (Addressable RGB) Gen 2 headers, one addressable Gen 2 header, and one AURA RGB header. ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme mounted in our test computer In the end, the built-in features, options, ports, and other technicalities of this motherboard are so many that it would probably take another two pages to enumerate all. So, although we’ll stop for now, if you want even more details, specs, and additional information, do visit the official webpage: ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme Tech Specs. The ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme motherboard is simply outstanding. The high-end components and the premium build are nothing short of incredible, not to mention how good it looks. Check the next page of this review to find out what the ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme motherboard can do in benchmarks using an Intel Core i7-12700K processor and see how it compares to another Z690 mainboard, namely the Gigabyte Z690 Aorus Pro.

ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme - Testing setup

As you know now, the ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme is ASUS’ top-of-the-line premium motherboard for Intel Alder Lake processors. This mainboard is what you could call the pinnacle of ASUS’ Z690 motherboards, which the company presented on YouTube on October 27th. The Maximus Z690 Extreme, together with the other Republic of Gamers mainboards based on the Z690 chipset, like the Extreme Glacial or Apex, all come with top-notch power supply specially designed for Alder Lake processors, support for XMP 3 and built-in ASUS enhanced memory profiles, Wi-Fi 6E and Thunderbolt 4, and PCI Express 5.0. ASUS motherboards for Intel Alder Lake processors To match all the features and performance offered by such a motherboard, we had to run our tests using only premium hardware components. For this review of the ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme motherboard, we chose the following hardware and software:

• Processor: Intel Core i7-12700K
• Cooler: ASUS ROG Ryujin II 360
• Memory: Kingston FURY Beast DDR5 RAM (2 x 16GB, 4800MHz)
• Graphics Card: ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 3090
• Storage: Kingston KC3000 SSD (2TB, PCI-Express 4.0)
• Monitor: ASUS ROG Strix XG32VQ Curved Gaming Monitor (2560 x 1440 resolution, at 144Hz)
• Power Supply Unit: ASUS ROG Thor 850W Platinum
• Operating System: Windows 11 Pro Version 21H2 Build 22000.348

ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 3090 Additionally, we also compared the test results with those we got using the same processor and hardware components on a Gigabyte AORUS Z690 Pro motherboard. Let’s see what the benchmarks had to say about the ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme:

ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme - Benchmark results

We started by running the benchmark offered by CPU-Z. In the Single Thread test, using the ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme motherboard, the Intel Core i7-12700K processor scored 792 points, almost identical to what we got on the Gigabyte AORUS Z690 Pro mainboard. ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme: Benchmarks in CPU-Z Single-Thread In CPU-Z's Multi Thread test, which measures the multi-core performance of the processor, Intel Core i7-12700K got 9299 points on the ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme, and 9300 points on the Gigabyte AORUS Z690 Pro, again almost identical results. ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme: Benchmarks in CPU-Z Multi-Thread Then we ran Cinebench R23, a benchmark that measures the computer’s rendering speed. With ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme we got 22128 points, which is very slightly better than when we used the Gigabyte AORUS Z690 Pro, on which we measured 22032 points. ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme: Benchmarks in Cinebench R23 In Blender, we measured the time needed by the computer to render two different scenes (bmw27 and classroom). The Intel Core i7-12700K CPU on the ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme motherboard finished in 6.9 minutes, while on the Gigabyte AORUS Z690 Pro it needed 6.8 minutes. Here, it looks like ASUS’ motherboard performed a bit slower, but the results are in the testing process margin of error. ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme: Benchmarks in Blender Next, we ran PCMark 10, a benchmark that aims to measure the computer’s performance in regular activities such as web browsing, video conferencing, app start-up times, productivity, and digital content creation. Using the ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme motherboard, we got 8517 points, and 8528 points with the Gigabyte AORUS Z690 Pro. Yet again, the results are very similar, well within the margin of error for this sort of benchmark. ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme: Benchmarks in PCMark 10 Web browsing is one of the most common activities for anyone using a computer, so the speed of loading websites is essential for us all. To assess the performance of our test computer on the internet, we used JetStream 2 in Google Chrome. As you can see in the next chart, we were in for a surprise when we found that the ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme got a slightly weaker result (6% less) than the Gigabyte AORUS Z690 Pro. ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme: Benchmarks in JetStream 2 We also tested a few games, starting with Shadow of the Tomb Raider, which showed that the processor, using any of the two motherboards, could render more than 200 frames per second. We ran the benchmark using 1080p resolution and the lowest graphics quality, to show only what the processor can do on these mainboards. ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme: Benchmarks in Shadow of the Tomb Raider In Metro Exodus, a very resource-hungry game, using the lowest visuals possible, we again saw an average frame rate of more than 200. ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme: Benchmarks in Metro Exodus In Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, on the lowest graphics quality and in 1080 resolution, we measured an average frame rate of 166 when using the ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme motherboard, and 168 fps when using the Gigabyte AORUS Z690 Pro. ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme: Benchmarks in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla Although the test results depend a lot on what processor, RAM, or storage devices you use, benchmarking a motherboard can give us an insight on what to expect from it. And, as you’ve seen, the ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme is able to deliver excellent results in any kind of situation.

Software bundled with the ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme

We’ll start by saying something quite unexpected: you don’t get any bloatware from ASUS! Practically, you can just install the motherboard, and clean install Windows 11 or Windows 10 for that matter, and use none of the software offered by ASUS. Everything is as clean as it gets. However, if you want to, and we recommend you do so, after you install the operating system, you’ll be asked whether you want to download and install ASUS’ Armoury Crate app. Armoury Crate: A hub for drivers, tools, and settings Why should you use it? Well, because this app is essential for getting access to all the personalization options and features of the ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme motherboard. Besides giving you an overall view and monitoring tools of your hardware, Armoury Crate lets you control the fans in your computer, it helps you install the motherboard drivers automatically, update BIOS, adjust the Aura Sync RGB lighting effects, and change settings for your other Republic of Gamers devices. Settings for the fans in your computer Furthermore, in this particular case, when you own an ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme motherboard, the Armoury Crate is needed if you want to customize the AniMe Matrix LED plate, as well as the OLED display under the CPU. AniMe Matrix settings available in Armoury crate There are other optional utility apps that ASUS offers with the ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme motherboard, but, as we’ve said, you don’t have to install them unless you want. Using Armoury Crate, you can add the following tools on your computer:

• Google Chrome: the most widely used web browser in the world, so no further explanations are required.
• AI Suite 3: a desktop program that analyzes your system and shows you information about it, while also helping you optimize things such as power consumption or the speed of the fans.
• AIDA64 Extreme: a system reporting and benchmarking tool that can be really useful if you want in-depth details about your computer, or want to test its performance and stability
• BullGuard Internet Security: a security solution that includes a good antivirus and firewall, and for which, in theory, you get a one-year subscription. However, when we installed it, we only got 30 days of trial.
• CPUID ROG CPU-Z: a small tool that shows you information about your processor and also lets you quickly benchmark it.
• GameFirst VI: a tool made by ASUS that helps you optimize the network traffic in order to have a lag-free gaming experience.
• WinRAR: a popular shareware compression tool.

Additional tools that you can install The Armoury Crate app available for the ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme is useful and works great. You need it if you want to personalize the way your motherboard looks and works, so you should install it. As for the additional apps that you can install, it’s your choice, and we appreciate that ASUS doesn’t force you to use them.

What’s your opinion about the ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme?

At the end of this review, it’s pretty obvious that we like the ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme motherboard a lot. Before leaving, tell us your opinion about it. Do you own it, or do you have the (very generous) budget to buy it? Are you impressed by its numerous features? Let us know what you think in the comments section below.