The PCB and connectors:
The tools for clocker:
Let’s start with the elements inserted on the PCB which can be interesting tools for overclockers. There are a lot of them on this model, which has become a habit with Asus on the high end. This confirms its position as a card dedicated to overclocking.
- The power button: allows the powering of the motherboard.
- The FlexKEY (reset) : allows to restart the motherboard in case of failure. The button can now be assigned to another task like Safe Boot or disable backlight.
- Safe Boot: allows to restart the board even if the parameters chosen in the bios do not allow the boot. This avoids having to do a CMOS Clear to reboot and thus lose your encoded settings.
- ReTry Button : during cold tests, sometimes the OS freezes and a reset doesn’t allow to restart the motherboard : only solution 6, 7 seconds by keeping the START button pressed. With the ReTry button, it restarts immediately.
- Switch bios : allows to switch between the two bios. You can choose to have an ” overclocking ” bios and a “H24” bios.
- Slow Mode: in cold mode, if you want to reach 6 GHz in 60x100MHz, by activating the Slow Mode, you boot in 8×100 and in the OS, hop back to 60×100.
- RSVD: when activated under cold conditions (-120°C), it avoids ” Cold boot bug “.
- LN2 Mode: allows to activate LN2 profiles in the bios.
- The Q LED: 4 diodes (CPU – DRAM – VGA – BOOT) which allow to diagnose errors during the boot of the board. The one that remains lit corresponds to the problem.
- The Q Code: allows to display a code which corresponds to the component responsible for the error during the boot. This is now displayed on the OLED screen and the list of codes can be found in the manual.
- The CMOS CLR: allows to erase the BIOS parameters in order to return to the default ones.
- ProbeIT : allows you to measure voltages with a multimeter directly on the PCB.
The PCB:
Our Asus Maximus Z790 Extreme is based on a 24 + 1 + 2 phase power supply. The part in charge of the CPU consists of 24 phases and on this model, no splitter., but beware the phases are placed in parallel. We find the new controller, the RAA 229131 chip, present on a large number of Z690 motherboards. Here, we are on a X+Y=20 management, that is to say a 12 + 1 mode.
The 24 mosfets are all RAA 22010540 of 105A grouped in parallel by phase and thus allow to split them without using a splitter. The mosfets in the power stages generate the most heat because they are responsible for the voltage conversion and delivery to the CPU from the 12 volt EPS connector.
The connectors :
The rear panel has the following components. First of all, the Clear CMOS and the button to flash the BIOS from a USB stick.
In terms of USB ports, this ROG Maximus Z790 Extreme has a Thunderbol 4 USB Type-C port, a USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 port (1 x USB Type-C), 8 USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports (7 x Type-A + 1 x USB Type-C), an HDMI port, a Wifi module, an Intel 2.5Gb Ethernet port, a Marvell AQtion 10Gb Ethernet port, five LED-illuminated audio jacks and an optical output.
