The ROG Dominus Extreme motherboard will mount up just fine to my 2nd CL Mercury bench chassis. Good thing I kept one CaseLabs SSI-EEB extended mobo tray. Looks like might need to mount a 2nd PSU. Have some room in the lower left chamber, enough for a 2nd 1000watt Seasonic, but it won't be mounted properly just sitting behind a 240mm radiator, still with sufficient airflow no cable clutter, the rear AC to the UPS will need to lead into the case via a CL fan hole cover instead of the standard PSU rear mount. Other than that, no issues foreseen at all.
Will begin the Brutal Enigma build January 2019, Siliconlottery.com might bin some of the 28core and 26core and 24core Intel Xeons. These CPUs, if I read correctly are K suffix or at least unlocked Xeon CPUs?
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It's odd how many of ROG's new Maximus motherboard designs from 2018 are featuring the very clean aesthetic of the PCIe shroud, first seen on the gorgeous Rampage VI Extreme, and now again on the Maximus XI Code and Formula and the outrageous Dominus Extreme board pictured below.
Yet for the Maximus XI Extreme "so called" flagship board, NOPE. ROG reverts back to the 2017 overall aesthetic of the Zenith Extreme or even farther back to 2016 and borrows styling cues from the Rampage V Edition 10. Yes of course, both those boards were beautiful at the time of their release, but the R6E raised the bar quite a bit for what we enthusiasts NOW expect from an Extreme labeled motherboard.
The Maximus XI Extreme just doesn't cut it at all. Even the Maximus XI Hero is more complete aesthetically, with heat sinks over the M.2 ports and aesthetic touches near the northbridge area, where the M11E is left blank and absent aesthetically. Yes, maybe ROG was considering those enthusiasts who will be mounting the new Optane extra-long 110mm 380GB M.2 SSD between PCIe slots 3 and 4 in that bare M.2 port since that sku arrives with it's own heatsink top and bottom, front and rear, and will look gorgeous mounted in that position, but I think it's more ROG trying as hard as they can to keep the M11E at the $499 price point. And that's fine but so many of us, like me, have been waiting 18 to 24months since the M9E fiasco for a new flagship mainstream motherboard to complete our new Intel 6-core and now 8-core builds, and Asus did not deliver.
Why couldn't they just add the PCIe shroud for a cleaner more complete aesthetic and charge $529? 
And why is the Apex 11 not being talked about? Usually ROG releases the most expensive motherboard last in every generation.
The release usually goes like this TUF, Hero, Prime, Strix all launch at once. Then Formula and Code, then Apex, then Extreme (if there is an Extreme for the gen)
And why did ROG stop producing the Apex 10 last year around April/May? Discontinued they said at B&H Photo. Why would ROG discontinue such a popular board?
The Maximus 8 Extreme was offered in two skus back in 2015.
Maybe it's possible ROG will offer two Apex skus? Now that would be absolutely remarkable.
One stripped down for the LN2 guys with just the rear I/O finally integrating the metal shield and maybe adding Wifi/Bluetooth at the $399 point.
And another Apex Extreme "Fully Loaded" with all the goodies even the PCIe shroud for $549. Is that why the Apex will be launching last? Yea I know, I'm grasping at straws here, hoping for hope against all hope, but that would be such a miracle for this Batman build, which really and truly is in need of some refined aesthetics to balance out all the roughness already included.
The $399 and $529-$549 price points are BOTH wide open for the current generation product stack, so let's see what ROG has up their sleeves. LOL
