How Much Does it Cost?
A lot and by a lot, I damn sure mean A LOT! This beast of a board is going to come in at around £939.99 currently here in the U.K.! This may seem like an astronomical price to pay for a motherboard and it is! However, the MAXIMUS XIII EXTREME is not designed for your everyday user and is more so designed for professionals. Users who can make the most of this board will appreciate all it has to offer for its higher than normal price.
Overview
As I have said, this board is not designed for your everyday user. It is designed for professional overclockers that want to make their 11th Gen CPUs bleed and cry! ASUS have added all the hardware and customization need to control the board exactly how you want, allowing you to push your components to their limits. ASUS has also included software and AI enhancements to make sure you are getting every single ounce of performance out of your 11th Gen CPU that is possible. While expensive, if you want to push your components to be mere millimetres away from death, this is the board that will help you do so!
Build Quality & Design
From the second I took this board of its box, the quality spoke for itself. It has to be literally the heaviest motherboard I have ever had to pleasure of using. While I know weight doesn’t always equate to quality, in this case it does! ASUS have included everything on this board you could want except for maybe a free-range LN2 dispenser. Seriously, the board looks and feels amazing and performs equally as good! I have to say this is the best quality Z590 board I have had on my test bench in the last couple of weeks.
Performance
I almost feel as if I should get rid of this category for the MAXIMUS XIII EXTREME. This board doesn’t have a fair shake as while it performs equally as well as most of the other Z590 boards, it’s not designed to be run at stock settings. The MAXIMUS XIII EXTREME is designed for tweaking, configuring and a hell of a lot of LN2 which I just don’t have the time or space for when it comes to reviewing motherboards for a launch! What I will say is that even if you are just using it for standard gaming sometimes, it will do you just fine and there is no reason to think otherwise.
Added Value
There is far too much to put here for this board, so what I will do is add a few of the examples that are still free in my head. One of the things I loved is the DIMM.2 which is essentially a RAM slot that houses two M.2 drives. This is a great way to get extra storage on your board! I am also quite a big fan of the FLEX KEY button and while I never have the time to use it properly, I reckon it could have a great impact if you were using this board on a daily basis. Let’s also not forget about the BIOS flashback and clear CMOS buttons that play equally important parts in the overall user experience that the MAXIMUS XIII has to offer.
Should I Buy One?
Are you a normal day to day use just looking to play some games? If so, then no – check out the MAXIMUS XIII HERO instead. Do you NEED to get the most overclocking performance out of your new Intel 11th Gen CPU? Then yes, you should get the board but I am also guessing if this is the case the price won’t put you off too much as you are likely used to paying extremes to get the hardware needed to do what you want!
