Overclocking

The results are in, and the ASUS ROG Crosshair VIII Extreme is top-tier. AMD Ryzen CPUs aren't known for high overclocks in the first place, but getting 4.35 GHz all-core stable was simple. It didn't require tinkering with the PWM frequency or Load-Line Calibration. 4.4 GHz booted into Windows, but was unstable for benchmarks. As I was unwilling to pass 1.35 V for a 50 MHz increase, that was the end of this light overclocking adventure.

This motherboard is certainly capable of taking any Ryzen CPU to its limits. It will come down to the end-user's willingness to raise the voltages based on their desired outcome. AMD's built-in Precision Boost (PBO) is still great for those who have limited interest in overclocking.

Memory Overclock

Just like CPU overclocking, ASUS has done great with the memory support; overclocking the memory was painless. Simply enable the wanted D.O.C.P profile and off you go. I did find it a bit odd that this motherboard topped out at DDR4-4800 (single-rank) and not any higher because of its ultra-high-end product category. But in practice, AMD Ryzen users will always want to match the memory to the highest Infinity Fabric frequency of their CPU for optimal results anyway. For the 5000 series, that is around 2000 MHz (DDR4-4000). Only reason to break this 1:1 memory ratio is for some personal benchmark records, as higher-speed memory does provide more bandwidth. The downside of running memory in a 2:1 ratio is that it introduces a latency penalty which negatively affects most applications.