Asus ROG Maximus XIII Extreme/Extreme Glacial Review: Z590 Flagships on Air or Water

Asus’ Rocket Lake flagships lift premium off another level.

Asus ROG Maximus XIII Extreme
Editor's Choice
(Image credit: © Asus)

Why you can trust Tom's Hardware Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about how we test.

Firmware

Asus’ BIOS for Z590 looks the same as found on previous-generation Z490-based motherboards. Teh company uses a red background with white writing on these ROG boards -- a theme we’re all familiar with at this point. Asus starts in “EZ” mode where it presents some high-level information and a couple of adjustable options such as enabling XMP and Boot priority. Advanced Mode has a slew of BIOS options, many of which most users will not touch. Asus organized the BIOS well and many of the common functions, particularly overclocking functionality, are easily accessible without drilling deep into the pages. Overall, Asus offers a user-friendly BIOS with enough options to keep the most advanced user busy.

Joe Shields
Staff Writer, Components

Joe Shields is a staff writer at Tom’s Hardware. He reviews motherboards and PC components.

  • tresnugget
    Instead of testing at optimized default settings, you should consider testing while normalizing bclk and power limits. It's well known that motherboard manufacturers boost performance by giving those a bump so it would be a better comparison of actual performance differences by manually entering the stock values for bclk, pl1, pl2, tau, etc. This is how GN tests but they don't test anywhere near as many motherboards as you guys.
    Reply