Motherboards have changed drastically in their role over the years. What started off as an almost secondary item available in one or two variants quickly became a component that had more versions that anyone could count. The time around the Pentium 3 and AMD Thunderbirds were especially rife with multiple chipset types, socket variations and other tweaks that it definitely lead to the long-held belief that PC hardware is so varied that almost no two machines are alike.Time has naturally moved on during the era of the 775 socket chipsets and their motherboards became much more standardised until we reach, at least on the Intel side, the situation we’re in today in that there are only two major chipsets available and much of the motherboard duties have been offloaded onto the processor.Of course this is still a business and so companies still need to provide variations. Much like the automotive industry this has meant that your basic board has split into three main types, the budget no-frills version, the mainstream version, and the high-end premium price models. As over-clocking has become a much more competitive the premium models are either luxury bullet-proof ones designed for 24/7 usage or highly overclockable models for the world-record hunters.ASUS  produce a wide range of motherboards to suit all pockets, and today we are taking a look at their top-end P55 model, the ASUS Maximus III Extreme.