Asus revolutionised the high-end small form factor PC when it launched its first Maximus Impact board. It sported a VRM daughterboard, loads of tweaking and overclocking tools, a discrete proprietary sound, and all the bells and whistles usually offered by high-end ROG motherboards, except expansion slots. It was a big hit with its target market, and the Maximus VIII Impact now brings the Impact series into the Z170 Skylake world.
This time, Asus has moved the power, reset and clear-CMOS buttons from the PCB to the rear I/O panel. The result is a board that visually looks slightly less featurepacked, but the features are still there, as is an LED POST code display and USB BIOS Flashback button.
The PCB also sports the familiar VRM daughterboard, which has heatsinks on both sides and provides additional power phases. The Maximus VIII Impact offers a total of ten power phases, with six for the CPU and two apiece for the integrated GPU and DRAM. Comparatively, Asus’ cheaper Z170i Pro Gaming only has four power phases, although that didn’t seem to limit its overclocking headroom, as it managed a respectable 4.8GHz with our Core i7-6770K last month.
Meanwhile, the sound card is based on Realtek’s ALC1150 audio codec, but there’s a HyperStream ESS9023 DAC, a dedicated clock, electronic shielding and Nichicon capacitors. You also get a more advanced Asus software suite compared with your average Realtek on-board audio system too, although the sound card itself is rather chunky – thankfully, it doesn’t obstruct any of the PCB’s components, although it remains to be seen if any of the inevitable thirdparty, full-cover waterblocks from the likes of Bitspower or EK will cover the PCB as extensively as previous models.
As usual, you get four SATA 6Gbps ports, which are located to the left of the DIMM slots, which may cause issues with cable routing, but the location of these parts has always been the same with the Impact motherboards. The PCB is otherwise fairly clear and there’s enough room around the CPU socket and above the sound card to use an all-in-one liquid cooler too.
In terms of new connections, there are USB 3.1 Type-A and Type-C ports courtesy of Intel’s Alpine Ridge controller, but M.2 has been ditched in favour of U.2, meaning you’ll be able to hook it up to one of Intel’s 2.5in 750 SSDs, but you won’t be able to use any of the speedy M.2 SSDs available, including Samsung’s 950 Pro. That’s a great shame, as Samsung’s 950 Pro is a corker and also cheaper than Intel’s 2.5in SSD 750. Products making use of U.2 are fairly thin on the ground but there are plenty of M.2 devices in a range of speeds and prices.
We spoke to Asus about this decision, and the company told us that U.2 does have some advantages. The drive isn’t strapped to the PCB as with M.2 drives, for example, so you’re less likely to suffer from the drive overheating and throttling, although with the latest SSDs drawing a paltry amount of power, that’s perhaps unlikely.
In any event, Asus seems confident in its decision and U.2 may well become popular next year. For now, though, if you’ve set your sights set on a mini-ITX Skylake rig using a Samsung 950 Pro, you can consider Asus’ Z170i Pro Gaming instead, or just use a standard SATA SSD until U.2 drives become more widely available.
In the box, you also get a magnetic desktop Wi-Fi aerial that hooks up to the two 802.11ac antenna outputs on the back. There’s also an extended fan hub, which allows you to add up to four 3/4-pin fans and control them from the EFI, as well as two thermal probe headers with wine probe included too.
Performance
At stock speed, The Impact’s performance was a little lacklustre, with the cheaper Z170i Pro Gaming managing a slightly higher score in our RealBench 2015 tests. The Impact was a tad slower in Total War: Attila too and in the SATA 6Gbps tests, where the write speed was around 10MB/sec slower than the Z170i Pro Gaming. The Impact’s audio production was also slightly better in RightMark’s Audio Analyzer tests, though, with the Impact offering a superior signal-to-noise ratio and dynamic range, as well as lower total harmonic distortion, although the differences were slight.
Overclocking a ROG motherboard is usually a pleasure, and the Impact was no exception. The EFI is clean and lagfree and all the settings you need are clumped together for easy access. We first aimed for 4.8GHz using a 1.4V vcore, which was fine, so we tried for 4.9GHz. At the latter frequency, RealBench initially failed halfway through, but simply setting loadline calibration to maximum solved this problem. You’ll need at least 1.4V to hit this frequency though; dropping down to 1.38V resulted in instability. Even so, 4.9GHz is the absolute best we’ve seen from our CPU, so the Impact is actually better than the vast majority of boards we’ve tested – quite an achievement.
Conclusion
The Maximus VIII Impact is very probably the best mini-ITX motherboard we’re likely to see for the Z170 chipset, but it isn’t quite as unequivocally awesome or as broadly appealing as its predecessors. The lack of an M.2 port is a shame, as many potential owners are likely to want to pair it with the likes of Samsung’s 950 Pro, especially to save space in mini-ITX systems.
However, layout is generally excellent – you get all the other latest connection standards, 802.11ac Wi-Fi, plenty of overclocking headroom, great tweaking tools and most likely a decent choice of waterblocks as well. You inevitably pay a hefty price for the end result, but if you want the ultimate mini-ITX Skylake board, the Maximus VIII Impact is the one to buy. For everyone else, though, Asus’ cheaper Z170i Pro Gaming is still a fine board, and it has the benefit of M.2 support as well. ANTONY LEATHER
VERDICT
An excellent overclocker that’s loaded with features, although it’s let down by the lack of an M.2 port, and it has a high asking price.
SPECIFICATIONS
Chipset Intel Z170
CPU socket Intel LGA1151
Memory support 2 slots: max 32GB DDR3 (up to 4133MHz)
Expansion slots One 16x PCI-E 3
Sound Asus SupremeFX Impact III
Networking Intel Gigabit Ethernet, dual-band 802.11ac Wi-Fi
Overclocking Base clock 40–650MHz, CPU multiplier 8-83x; max voltages, CPU 1.7V, RAM 2V
Ports 4 x SATA 6Gbps (Z170), 1 x SATA Express, 1 x U.2, 4 x USB 3, 1 x USB 3.1 Type-A, 1 x USB 3.1 Type-C, 1 x LAN, 2 x Wi-Fi antenna outputs, 3 x surround audio out, line in, mic, 1 x HDMI
Dimensions (mm) 170 x 170