I
f a motherboardis scoredontheweightofits
box,theROGZenithII Extremewouldrackup
thepoints.It’soneofthemostextreme
motherboardstopassthroughourlab.Forstarters,while
pricingwasstillveryapproximatewhenwewenttopress,
it’ssettoretailforaround£700,whichmakesthisE-ATX
monsterthemostexpensivedesktopmotherboardwe’ve
everreviewed.Secondly,it looksabsolutelystunningina
heavymetal,imposingkindofway.
However,Asushasn’tjustslappedcopiousamountsof
aluminiumtothePCBintheformof
heatsinksandbackplates.TheRGBlighting
is incredible,withaninfinitymirror-likearray
ontheI/Oshroud,a hugeilluminatedROG
logoonthechipsetheatsinkanda vivid,top-
to-bottomrowofRGBLEDsina diffusing
stripundertherightsideoftheboard.
There’salsoa Livedash1.77inOLEDdisplay
thatcanshowPOSTcode,CPUfrequency,
temperature,fanspeedsorliquidcooling
inputs,aswellasyourownGIFimages.It can
provehandywhenbenchmarking,andit
looksgoodtoo.
Topowera 32-coreThreadripperCPU,
youneedsomeseriousmotherboard
hardware,andtheROGZenithII Extreme
buildsonthechangesAsusmadetoits
refreshedX399boards.It hasa 16-phase
powerdeliverysystemwithteamedpower
phases,ratherthandoubledones.Thesecan
providethehighburstsofcurrentneeded
whena 32-coreCPUswingsintoaction.
TherearethreefansonthePCB,withthe
obviousonebeingthechipsetfan,withtwo
moreDeltaSuperflofanssittingamongtheASUSROGZENITH
II EXTREME/£715incVAT
SUPPLIER overclockers.co.ukTRX40 MOTHERBOARD
VRMs and spinning up when the VRMs reach 60°C.
Thankfully, they only spun up during heavy loads and were
quieter than the rest of our test components. Meanwhile, a
huge backplate acts as a large heatsink to cool hotspots on
the underside.
There’s more cooling for other hardware, including the
four PCI-E 4 M.2 ports. Two of these ports sit under a
removable heatsink on the PCB next to the chipset fan, while
the other two are on a DIMM.2 module that installs next to
the outer DIMM slots. This module sports large heatsinks on
both sides, and it kept our SSD cooler than the lower ports,
while also being more easily accessible, as it’s not blocked by
your graphics card.
You get the usual tools too, such as power, reset and clear-
CMOS buttons, plus an LN2 mode, a slow mode and USB
BIOS Flashback. As you’d expect, there’s plenty of fan
headers on the PCB as well, but Asus has also included a Fan
Extension Card II, which connects to the motherboard and
provides six more 4-pin headers, three temperature sensor
ports and three RGB headers.
There’s also a water-cooling pump header that can dish
out over 36W to control your pump, as well as coolant flow
sensors, plus a dedicated CPU waterblock port than can
receive data about temperature and leaks.
The storage and networking side of the ROG Zenith II
Extreme won’t leave you wanting either, with an Aquantia
10G Ethernet port in addition to the usual Intel Gigabit port, as
well as an Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX200 controller.
There are eight SATA 6Gbps ports too and a huge stack of
USB ports, including a pair of Type-C USB 3.1 headers andREVIEWS / MOTHERBOARD
SPEC
Chipset
AMD TRX40
CPU socket
TRX4
Memory support
8 slots: max 256GB DDR4 (up to
4533MHz)
Expansion slots
Four 16x PCI-E 4
Sound
8-channel ROG SupremeFX S1220
Networking
Aquantia 10G LAN, Intel Gigabit
LAN, Intel 802.11ax Wi-Fi
Overclocking
Base clock 40-300MHz, CPU
multiplier 22-63x; max voltages:
CPU 1.7V, RAM 2.5V
Ports
8 x SATA 6Gbps 4 x M.2 PCI-E 4, 6 x
USB 3.1 Type-A, 2 x USB 3.1
Type-C, 4 x USB 3, 3 x USB 2 2 x
LAN, 3 x surround audio out
Dimensions (mm)
310 x 277cc
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