Although the Maximus VIII Ranger is far from the cheapest board on test, it’s still notably less expensive than other Asus Republic of Gamers boards, giving enthusiasts a chance to get their hands on Asus’ ROG goodness without breaking the bank. It’s good to see solid, large heatsinks on the VRMs and chipset, although there’s no connecting heatpipe, as found on the other ROG boards. Free space around the power connectors isn’t that generous either, but that’s not a major problem. On the plus side, the main fan headers are positioned along the easily accessible top area of the board, including a connector for a pump, and the front and rear chassis fan headers are in the right places as well.
Meanwhile, there are six SATA ports and two SATA Express ports with right-angled connectors, and a single M.2 connector is located to the lower right of the motherboard, positioned below the middle 16x PCI-E slot. Placing the M.2 connector in this area of the board is better than placing it in a fiddly spot right under the top 16x slot, and there’s also enough space for 22110 device compatibility. Of course, your M.2 device will be obscured if a graphics card is installed in that slot, but that’s only likely to be an issue if you’re building a dual-GPU setup.
There’s also a single 1x PCI-E slot above the main 16x PCI-E slot, so it’s always accessible even with two graphics cards installed. There’s extra space between the top two 16x PCI-E slots too, giving room for plenty of airflow, and there’s still a third slot you could use for a PCI-E SSD, rounding off a generally strong layout.
We were also pleased to see that the EFI is almost identical to the one included with the Maximus VIII Gene, with a great layout that’s rich with tools for overclocking and system control. It carries over the same features too. Firmware updating via USB or over the Internet is possible, with a dedicated BIOS Flashback button at the rear. The useful SSD Secure Erase feature is there too, plus fan control software, profile saving to USB and a port renaming tool.
There are a few small differences between the Gene and Ranger though. You still get two USB 3.1 ports (type-A and type-C) but there are four USB 2 ports on the back, and only two USB 3 ports, which seems a bit mean – the Gene has no USB 2 ports on the back. As you would expect, the board also features on-board power and reset buttons, and a POST code display for easy testing.
As usual for a ROG board, though, the Ranger was great at overclocking. It managed to overclock our CPU to 4.9GHz while only needing a 1.36V vcore – well below the amount some boards needed to reach a lower 4.8GHz or 4.7GHz frequency. As with the Gene, the Ranger was also a fantastic performer in our tests, with both ROG boards occupying the top spots in our RealBench 2015 test, and in our Total War benchmarks.
Despite a couple of very minor niggles with the board layout, the Maximus VIII Ranger is otherwise very well designed and fast, and it offers a great EFI and some genuinely useful extra features. Throw its superb overclocking abilities into the mix, and the Ranger is the best-balanced enthusiast ATX motherboard on test, and it’s priced reasonably too.
VERDICT
Well designed, fast, great at overclocking and rich with genuinely useful features. The Ranger is a great enthusiast motherboard for a surprisingly reasonable price.
SPECIFICATIONS
Chipset Intel Z170
CPU socket Intel LGA1151
Memory support 4 slots, max 64GB DDR4 (3400MHz - OC)
Expansion slots Three 16x PCI-E, three 1x PCI-E
Sound Realtek ALC1500
Networking Intel i219v Gigabit Ethernet
Overclocking Base clock 40–650MHz, CPU multiplier 8–83x; max voltages, CPU 1.7V, RAM 2V
Ports 1 x PS/2, 2 x SATA Express, 6 x SATA 6Gbps 1 x M.2, 4 x USB 2, 2 x USB 3, 1 x USB 3.1 (type-A), 1 x USB 3.1 (type-C), 1 x Gigabit LAN, 8-channel surround audio out, line in, mic, optical S/PDIF out
IGP display outputs 1 x HDMI, 1 x DisplayPort
Dimensions 305 x 244