Test System

Initial Setup

Initial setup with a boosted Turbo profile and without XMP enabled was pretty easy. The memory matched standard JEDEC timings.


Installing the board is pretty easy, with lots of room in most instances, although there are a couple of things to be mindful of. There is very little room left after installing a VGA with a backplate into the uppermost slot. A Ram cooler might not fit, for example. Many high-end memory kits at speeds of 2400 MHz and higher come with fans in the box. The second problem comes with VGA installation, specifically if you buy a couple of ASUS ROG VGAs with coolers that take up more than two slots. As you can see in the image above, installing two such cards means that the secondary PCIe x8 slot gives direct-to-CPU connectivity, but there is hardly any room for the top card to draw fresh air. Installing up to four dual-slot VGAs is not a problem - two is fine as well; that is, so long as you are ready to deal with the added heat the cards will produce, since they are installed right next to one another. ASUS does include an extended black Crossfire bridge to span the large gap. The slot arrangement also means that it is impossible to get a PCIe x16 link to more than one VGA at any given time, unlike the Gigabyte Z77X-UP7 I tested many weeks ago; it offers dual PCIe 3.0 x16 slots via the added PLX PEX8747 chip.


Installing the add-in WiFi GO! cards was easy as could be clearance-wise, with just enough room for drives installed on the mSATA to clear the MOSFET cooler.

Power Consumption

We measure CPU power consumption since one of our first tasks is to truly verify system stability. I isolate the power coming through the 8-pin ATX connector using an in-line meter that provides voltage and current readings as well as total wattage passed through it. While this may not prove to isolate the CPU power draw in all instances, it does serve as a good indicator of board efficiency and effective VRM design. I also measure total system power consumption, which allows you to get an idea of how much power the board and all installed devices draw.





The ASUS Maximus V Extreme put up pretty fantastic numbers under power consumption testing. For having so much built into the ASUS Maximus V Extreme, it really managed to surprise me with its top-level results in every instance. I'm sure having that odd PCIe arrangement played its role as well though, since that PLX PEX8747 chip doesn't get used at all if dual VGAs are installed in the recommended way.