Intel Z890 Motherboard Mega Guide (2025) — ASUS, ASRock, GIGABYTE & MSI

ASUS ROG Maximus Z890 Extreme — the no-compromise showcase

Extreme is ASUS’s statement board: more copper, bigger fin stacks, thicker backplates, and a slot/M.2 map designed to let you run a Gen5 GPU, a CPU-attached Gen5 x4 boot/cache SSD, and a small fleet of PCH Gen4 drives without lane roulette. The VRM is overspecified to make sustained all-core loads boring; surface area and heatpipe geometry keep MOSFET deltas low so you don’t lean on LLC to hide droop. Practically, you end up with lower noise across long renders/compiles and fewer clock dips mid-export.

Storage is where Extreme excels. In addition to the CPU Gen5 bay, ASUS bundles multi-M.2 risers and finned plates that actually wick heat rather than smother it under decorative shells. If you run a write-heavy scratch on Gen4 and a hot cache on Gen5, the thermal budget here means fewer throttling events. TB4/TB5 (region-dependent), Wi-Fi 7, and a deep USB roster are present, and networking variants with 10GbE exist in some markets. QoL is fully loaded: Slot Q-Release, tool-less M.2 Q-Latch, postcode/Q-LED, BIOS FlashBack, and rich fan controls.

Memory is 4-DIMM (2DPC) with ASUS’s AEMP III/DIMM Flex tooling. Even at 96–128 GB, high-7K XMP is realistic; if you chase 8600–9000+ MT/s for sport, the Apex (2-DIMM) is cleaner. The reason to buy Extreme over Hero is lane/port density and thermal headroom if you genuinely plan to run five-plus NVMe and multiple high-speed peripherals simultaneously.

Spec snapshot

1. - E-ATX, flagship SPS VRM with large fin heatsinks + heatpipe
  - 4× DDR5 (AEMP III / DIMM Flex), 96–128 GB friendly
  - PCIe 5.0 x16 GPU; CPU-Gen5 x4 M.2; multi-Gen4 M.2 via risers
  - TB4/TB5 (model/region), Wi-Fi 7, rich USB, some SKUs with 10GbE

Official page: ROG Maximus Z890 Extreme