Introduction

When talking about overclocking, ASUS's ROG series of products are without a doubt part of the conversation as ASUS has definitely left its mark on the overclocking enthusiast community over the years since the ROG debut, and in ways other brands have not been able to match. The wide capability and complete design focus this series brings to the table had red and black ROG colors dominate top rankings of global benchmarking achievements for many years, and while ASUS's MAXIMUS products have long come in several flavors, the EXTREME, the FORMULA, and the GENE, ASUS has now launched a new SKU, the ASUS MAXIMUS VI HERO I reviewed several weeks ago, a value-oriented overclocking board designed around users requesting a ROG-level product with a slightly slimmer focus on extreme overclocking enthusiasts. That board made quite the impression, and I have to call it a great success, but those three older SKUs, the EXTREME, the FORMULA, and the GENE, all have Z87 variants as well, and the first I'm going to look at is none other than the MAXIMUS VI EXTREME.

The ASUS MAXIMUS VI EXTREME has already been on our front page by way of some memory reviews I posted since Intel launched Haswell, so I obviously spent considerably more time with the ASUS MAXIMUS VI EXTREME than some of the other Intel Z87 products sitting on my shelf. Specifically designed to be the base of a record-breaking overclocking and benchmarking rig, the ASUS MAXIMUS EXTREME is ASUS's high-end ROG option, built from the ground up to take every piece of installed hardware to the limit and beyond, which is the reason I use it for my memory reviews. The flexibility and a huge number of overclocking-friendly options make it an indispensable tool no overclocking enthusiast should be without.

Specifications