14 DAY TRIAL // Not so many decades ago, overclocking was a tedious and dangerous procedure that involved physical modifications to the motherboard, whether it meant changing the placement of jumpers that regulated the voltage or wattage received by the processor, to pumping surplus power into the CPU via the BIOS. Such overclocking attempts ended in a variety of ways, including everything from the positive results, such as successful speed boosts (regardless of how short-lived they were), to the less pleasant ones, such as melted processors or other incidents involving heat and flames (and, most likely, interesting fits of temper).
Nowadays, overclocking is actually supported by manufacturers and some products are especially designed to provide a high possibility for such modifications. ASUS, however, doesn't seem content with just implementing overclocking options into the BIOS or its components' drivers, actually going as far as creating wireless methods for such operations to be carried out.
The Taiwanese company's motherboard that will demonstrate this overclocking via the Bluetooth ability is the Republic of Gamers (ROG) Maximus III Extreme, a cutting-edge product based on the P55 chipset. Wireless overclocking will be possible via the combined resources of ASUS's proprietary ROG Connect overclocking platform and its extension, the RC Bluetooth. This latest addition will allow ROG users to tweak their system statuses from a Bluetooth-capable PDA phone.
The Maximus III Extreme is a very powerful addition to the famous ROG Maximus III motherboard series and, like all ROG boards, it was especially designed for top gaming capabilities and maximum overclocking possibilities. ROG Connect (which was first introduced with the Maximus III Formula and Maximus III GENE) could already allow users to employ notebooks and netbooks to manage their main systems via USB, but the latest variation makes improvements to the BIOS, giving it update and recovery functions along with the possibility for on-the-fly voltage and frequency adjustments, all at hardware level.
The ability to restore a corrupted BIOS via a notebook will be especially useful for hard-core overclockers, since BIOS corruption is quite likely when forcefully modifying the chipset's functions.
These possibilities will be supplemented by the aforementioned overclocking via Bluetooth possibilities. The RC Bluetooth will, however, also be equipped with all the regular Bluetooth functions, such as stereo music playback. All that is required to switch between overclocking mode and normal mode is the press of a small button built into the device's rear I/O panel.
The wireless overclocking capabilities of the ROG Maximus III Extreme will be demonstrated from November 26 through 29 at the world's largest LAN/eSports event, DreamHack Winter. The motherboard, under the patronage of world-class overclockers, will also be participating in the event's overclocking competition on November 27 and 28.