ASUS Maximus III Extreme Core i5 DDR3 Gaming Motherboard Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2010-05-08
·
2,356 words · ~11 min read
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so this is a fairly exciting new product from isus this is the latest edition or
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one of the latest two editions in their Republic of gamer line of motherboards
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this is the Maximus 3 Extreme so the other one that's launching at the same
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time is the Rampage 3 Extreme which is the x58 version and then this is the p55
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version so that means that it is compatible with I'm going to I discarded
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my remote there which was a bad move okay so that means it is compatible with
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Intel Core i7 and core i5 so the those are the LG LGA 1156 variants it is SLI
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ready Crossfire ready and let's see what
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Aus has to say for themselves on the
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back or on the inside I should say of the motherboard box so first of all it
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has Rog connect Rog connect allows you to plug in and overclock tweak get the
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hardcore way okay that's not very
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explanatory I think it's a little um little module though that you plug into
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the board okay so USB BIOS flashback no worry of BIOS crash anytime so rather
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than having a dual BIOS feature like their competitors what they've done is
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they've actually worked in a way to just plug in a USB thumb drive and recover
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your BIOS that way clever because then you can cover whatever recover whatever
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one you want Extreme Engine Digi plus this one I've never heard of say hello
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to the Next Generation design and then they have a picture of the CPU socket
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area so I'm guessing it's something to do with power delivery okay and then PC
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Bluetooth overwhelm your acknowled M with wireless overclocking
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experience let me read that again
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overwhelm your acknowledgement with
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wireless overclocking experience okay it includes a copy of 3D
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Mark Vantage as well as a copy of kasperski antivirus uh which may or may
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not be a trial version I don't know all right and then we have a window into the
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board itself so you can see that it has their uh their typical excellent look
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which you always expect from their Republic of Gamers line it's always
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going to look awesome on the back we find uh most of the same information we
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found on the inside there except for a couple other things it gives us a big
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list of specs and I'm not going to bother to tell you that and like what's
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included because I'm about to open it up and tell you about it so let's get this
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box opened up and have a look at the board so I'm going to pull out there's
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two two boxes inside here there's uh two black boxes side by side so I'm going to
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pull out the accessories one first and we'll have a look at that start with
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here all right so I'll just put the board aside for a minute and let's see
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what we find inside the accessories
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box I'm going to have to figure out how to get it open first and then we'll be
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good to go wow lots of accessories that's the
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thing about these high-end boards is you get a nice big accessory package with
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them that you don't typically see on the lower end model so first of all we have
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an IO Shield all right typical looking IO Shield it has A's uh fluffy shiny
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metal thing on the back all right then we have a USB cable USB a mail to a mail
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then we have a USB and eSATA bracket
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that you can install in your case if you don't already have those enough of them
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at the back then we have the Maximus 3 Extreme user guide as well as oh a
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couple things okay first of all you've got um the driver CD which also includes
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a copy of 3D Mark Vantage on it the keys on the back so I'm obviously not going
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to show you that and then on in here we
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have a bunch of stickers to label your SATA cables so you can label them with
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hard drive 1 hard drive two optical drive 1 optical drive two and then you
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can write a little descriptive thing for it that's pretty nice then you've got a
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huge Republic of Gamers case sticker this thing is enormous there's my hand
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for scale so you could throw that on like your side window if you so desired
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although most people probably wouldn't desire but for those who do desire it is
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there that's the thing about you know a big accessory packag is just in case
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it's there all right you've got an optional fan for cooling the
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mosfets next thing we find is
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the I think this is the Rog connect
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module or something oh maybe this is the Bluetooth
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thing you know what I don't know okay
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next we have a three-way SLI Bridge
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looks just like that looks like any other three-way SLI Bridge so I guess
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that answers that question this board does have support for three-way SLI and
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then you have just a normal flexible SLI bridge for two-way SLI they include a
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couple of uh zip ties as well as the assus Q connect in case you have a
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really old chassis that doesn't have the the block of connectors they've included
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a wide variety of SATA cables here so you've got one right angle and one
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straight in each of these four packs so ASUS has included eight SATA cables for
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you with this board they're black so they'll look good then you've got three
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temperature probes which I'm assuming you can plug
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into the board somewhere and then finally a crossfire Bridge so they've
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included it looks like a it might be a little bit longer than a standard
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Crossfire Bridge although it's hard to tell because I'm doing that off memory
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so um yeah it's atypical for the
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motherboard manufacturer to include a crossfire bridge but I guess it doesn't
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cost them a whole lot cuz most manufacturers actually include the
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crossfire Bridge with the uh with the
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video card not with the motherboard so I
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mean I guess the last thing they want you to do is buy a Maximus 3 Extreme you
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know high-end motherboard for your build and you know not have some part that
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you're going to need to put together your computer so ASUS has kind of
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thought of everything on this one let's get the motherboard itself out of the
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box here take just taking off the plastic cover and I remember having a
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bit of trouble getting a motherboard out of one of these um Republic of Gamers
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boxes at some point you just got to bend it just right yeah I got it figured out
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this time all right so let's have a look at the board layout itself so this is a
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p-55 board so that means you're going to find an LGA 1156 socket so that means
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you got support for core I3 Core i5 core i7 something to note about any cor i3s
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or core i5 dual course is that you are not going to have support for the
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Onboard video built in because there's no Onboard video ports on the back of
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the board the p-55 chipset does not support that particular feature whereas
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the h55 and h57 do okay you've got your
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uh your mosfet cooling here connected by one heat pipe to your North Bridge
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cooler and then that goes down by via another heat pipe to your South Bridge
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cooler and I'm guessing there's probably a SATA 6 as well as a USB 3.0 chipset
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under there somewhere actually the USB chipset might be somewhere else it
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doesn't really matter okay over on the side once again standard features you've
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got your DDR3 dual Channel slots and they use the these unique assus memory
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slots where you can see that only one side actually moves back and forth the
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other side is just fixed so what you do
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is you take the module you slide it in this way and then you put it down and
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then clip it into place so that's kind of a neat feature that they've built into a lot of their newer motherboards
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on the very high end so then up here we've got a four pin sorry a four pin
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an8 pin CPU connector right where it belongs at the top left of the board as
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well as a BIOS reset switch right there this there that is awesome because you
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don't need a bio switch on the back well mind you you have one but having one
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here is so much smarter than all the guys who are putting them wait a minute
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is that even a bio switch no I don't think it is that does something else
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because yeah they've already got one here they've got one on the back of the
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board and then they've got another bio switch down here at the bottom right of
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the board which is also a fairly good location for it because that's the kind
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of place that you can actually access even when you've got aoup graphics cards
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installed which is what I was about to say about this location no Q reset yeah
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all right okay so let's keep going down the board we've got our 24 pin connector
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right where it belongs on the right hand Edge and then we have a Go Button
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qled all right up here we have probit so
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that is where you can stick a a multimeter to find out what the voltages
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are going to the CPU uh CPU PLL I
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integrated memory controller the RAM PC CH and then you've got a couple ground
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connections there that's pretty nice and then uh qled tells you CPU dram VGA boot
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device H maybe it's some kind of error reporting you know what they've actually
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included a lot of features with this board that I've never seen before and
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I'm uh I've been caught a little bit uh off my guard here all right well why
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don't we keep just keep on chugging along so down at the bottom side of the
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board here we have two SATA 3 so that's SATA 6 gbit per second as well as six
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SATA 2 so that's SATA 3 GB per second running off the chipset and then we have
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the plx bridge chip which assus says is
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the best solution for running SATA 6 and USB 3.0 because it gives them access to
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the full bandwidth that they need okay and then we've got down at the bottom
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this motherboard has it appears all four pin pwm fan connectors built in so it
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has a ton of them actually why don't I pull back and have let you have a look
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at the whole board and I'll show you where they all are there's one here one here that's 2 3
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4 5 6
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7 eight eight four pin pwm fan
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connectors so you could potentially plug a CPU fan um you know and then seven
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case fans if you felt like it okay so let's keep on going here here's all your
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front panel connectors as well as one more SATA port and that's probably
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running off the same chipset as the one powering the EA port on the back you
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have 1 2 3 4 5 five PCI Express 16x
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physical connectors but not all of these are actually going to run at PCI Express
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16x um because with the p55 chipset you
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don't actually have access to that many PCI Express Lanes down here on the
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bottom we have ASUS's uh stylized start
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and restart buttons as well as a Molex
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connector so right there on the bottom of the board you got a Molex connector
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I'm going to go ahead and assume that that's for supplementary power for the
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PCI Express slots I mean if you're plugging in you know you could
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potentially do one two three four fmes if you had a yeah if
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you wanted to turn this into like a folding board then uh yeah you
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definitely need some supplementary power all right then they've got another
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supplementary power connector up here there's another Molex connector right
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there on the motherboard and then let's get around to the back panel so here
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you're going to find two USB 2.0 ports a PS2 keyboard Port then you've got a SE
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reset button and that actually is one then you have a a couple USB 3.0 ports
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you can tell by the blue color coding then you have optical audio out ESAT
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fire wire two more USB 2.0 ports two
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more USB 2.0 ports you know this is actually kind of confusing they've gone
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in colorcoded USB 2.0 black or red and
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then USB 3.0 blue so yeah that's okay I
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mean as long as you remember blue is USB 3.0 then you should be good you got
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gigabit Ethernet then you have the um
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Rog link as well as the USB cable that connects to it then you have 7.1 audio
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and that pretty much wraps up my unboxing and overview of the Maximus 3
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Extreme