Asus is known for top-notch gaming products – be it their awesome gaming laptops, desktops to their gaming PC components. We got our hands on the new Asus ROG Zenith II Extreme TRX40 a couple of days ago for a preview. Remember, this is a preview and not a review of the gaming motherboard.

Introduction
The Asus ROG Zenith II Extreme is the successor to the company’s previous-generation X399 board, the original Zenith Extreme. This one comes packed with all the benefits of AMD’s TRX40 chipset, which means it is an AMD TRX40 E-ATX motherboard sTRX4 for 3rd Gen Ryzen Threadripper. 

The motherboard comes with a whole lot of goodness, including 16 power stages, PCIe 4.0, Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax), 10 Gbps Ethernet, USB3.2 Gen2x2, dual USB 3.2 front panel connector, five M.2, SATA and Aura Sync RGB. One look at the packaging and you will appreciate Asus’ efforts put into this motherboard.

What’s Inside the Box?
The packaging is quite premium. Inside the box, you get the motherboard itself, the user manual, the USB software, and drivers installation drive, the ROG DIMM.2 module with heatsinks, 6 x SATA cables, Asus Fan Extension Card II, 5 x M.2 installation screws, 3-in-1 Thermistor cable, front panel Q-Connector, dual-function screwdriver, Intel AX200 Wi-Fi 6 moving antenna, ROG Coaster, 2 x 80 cm RGB Extension cables, ROG logo plate sticker, and ROG large sticker sheet.

Design
The Asus ROG Zenith II Extreme is an E-ATX motherboard that costs about $850. The motherboard is made up of stacked PCB, which is hidden by an aluminium PCB cover. This doubles up as a heatsink for two of the five available PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slots. The rear panel cover is also made of aluminium and includes a LiveDash 1.77″ OLED colour screen. 

The colour screen allows you to customise the look via GIFs, temperature and system usage data, or as a POST debugger. Around the board are integrated RGB LEDs with three customisable zones. Asus was possibly one of the first companies to really adopt RGB lighting in a big way and their AURA Sync lighting setup is one of the easiest and most flexible solutions around, supporting a massive range of LED types and features to ensure your system always reflects your personality and aesthetic tastes. 

You also get the rear panel cover, the ROG logo within the chipset heatsink, and on the right-hand side of the board. The company has also included two AURA RGB strip headers, and two addressable RGB headers for users to expand on what’s included out of the box. 

Connectivity
One of the major benefits of the TRX40 chipset is the introduction of PCIe 4.0 to the high-end desktop. The ROG Zenith II Extreme has plenty of connectivity with four full-length PCIe 4.0 slots which operate at x16/x8/x16/x8. Touching on the storage capabilities onboard, there is scope to install up to five PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 drives onto the board. 

Two of the PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slots are hidden underneath the aluminium armor, while a single slot is located on the rear of the PCB, albeit without a heatsink. As mentioned earlier, inside the box, you will find a ROG DIMM.2 module which allows you to install a further two PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 drives onto the board.

On the bottom edge, you get the front-panel audio, ATA-style auxiliary slot power, TPM, one (of two) ARGB and one (of two) RGB, one (of seven) open four-pin fan, two dual-port USB 2.0, one (of two) USB 3.0, Asus Node, two water flow tachometer, an Intel-style front-panel button/LED group, and PC (beep code) Speaker. The included Fan Extension card is but one of several available Asus Node-compatible devices.

The ROG Zenith II Extreme also has eight memory slots which have support for DDR4-4733 and up to 256 GB of system memory. Users can equip ECC memory, but only un-buffered ECC. Non-ECC UDIMMs work as well. Inside, you also get tons of IO including seven 4-pin headers split into two for CPU fans, two for water pumps, two for chassis fans, and one for a high amp fan.

The ROG Zenith II Extreme is designed to hold two triple-slot graphics cards by excluding its other two slots, but it can also do an x16/x8/x16/x8 configuration for users whose graphics cards fit within a double-slot envelope. Cooling the large 16-phase power delivery is a large aluminium finned heatsink which is aided with two small Delta Superflo fans.

There are onboard Start buttons as well as the Flexkey which lets you assign lighting options to your case reset key, should you so wish. Hardcore overclockers will appreciate the Slow and LN2 options, whilst those with a lot of internal lighting will enjoy the number of USB headers giving you maximum control.

Cooling and Sound
Great power requires great cooling, so ROG Zenith II Extreme employs large VRM heatsinks that strike the right balance between surface area and mass. This includes the VRM heatsink, the aluminum heatsink cover, solid steel backplate, chipset heatsink, aluminium I/O cover, DIMM.2 heatsinks, and SoC VRM heatsink. 

Sound is an integral part of gaming immersion. ROG Zenith II Extreme’s onboard audio joins the latest SupremeFX S1220 codec with a high-end ESS Sabre DAC. Power users in particular pipe content through multiple devices, so our Sonic Studio III software has an intuitive management interface that lets you route sound from applications to specific outputs. The board even supports DTS Sound Unbound technology, to create three-dimensional audio soundscapes that draw you further into virtual worlds.

The front-panel headphone output features a SABRE9018Q2C integrated DAC/amp capable of reaching -108dB THD+N to provide playback that conveys all the subtlety and nuances of even the highest-quality audio track. The improved resolution derived from the ESS Hyperstream DAC architecture expands the soundstage to give a better sense of positioning. Beyond resolution, the 120dB DNR provides an extremely low noise-floor, further accentuating dynamics and punch. 

So Who is it For?
The ROG Zenith II Extreme is for those craving for extensive styling and customisation options that can be used to build a powerful gaming system that truly stands apart. The AMD TRX40 chipset delivers outstanding overclocking capabilities for the latest AMD Socket sTRX4 3rd Gen Ryzen Threadripper series processors. It provides PCIe 4.0 support, 10 Gbps USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports, and eight SATA 6 Gbps ports for faster data retrieval.

The ROG Zenith II Extreme motherboard supports the latest 3rd Gen AMD Ryzen Threadripper series processors that boast up to 64 cores. It features quad-channel DDR4 memory, 64 lanes of PCI Express 4.0, 16 GT/s transfer speed for Gen 4 M.2 SSDs, and built-in native USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps) for superior performance.

Price: $850

Photography by: Ranbir Sen