Final Words & Conclusion
Final Words & conclusion
Incredibly loud and sexy would be my description for the ASUS ROG Maximus VIII.
The new design, the build quality and its feature set are incredibly cool. ROG is designed by the ASUS Republic of gamers team and traditionally always offered red/black motherboards catered to overclockers and enthusiast gamers. What I like very much is that the ROG design changed a bit, not just the standard black/red, no the subtle grey accent simply looks good. Features wise this thing is great, but more of the same that other products offer as well. That is not criticism, it's just the reality of motherboards anno 2015. Combined with the Core i7 6700K on the ASUS Z170 ROG Maximus VIII Extreme motherboard certainly is impressive and does perform really well, however the reality is that almost all Z170 based motherboards perform more or less the same. It's the extra features where you will need to find your fuchin temple. Overall the Extreme is rated a notch higher in performance, but the extra perf you see is mostly related to the higher base clocks.
The performance is up there and combined with DDR4 memory this processor makes a good step forward. Combined with the series 100 chipset new features are available as well, SATA3, M.2, even go U2 and SATA Express. Then there's the added benefit of DDR4 memory that not only use less power, the frequency can be so much higher as well, bringing more bandwidth and overall performance to the applications that require fast memory. Combine that with things like nice Gigabit jacks, exemplary audio solutions on the new motherboards and things like USB 3.1. So what I am trying to say here is that the overall platform experience is what it is all about for Skylake. Performance with kick-ass features.
Storage
Combined with eight SATA 6Gbps ports we can hardly complain about anything. I find interesting the developments on the M.2 interface, pop in an M.2 compatible PCI-E SSD and you'll see your SSD quickly perform in the 700/800 Mb/sec range. Overall your SATA and M.2 connectivity is plentiful and top notch when it comes to performance. Great to see is that the slow has obtained a x4 PCIe interface connection allowing it 32 Gbps of bandwidth to work in. To compare a little, your SATA3 port has 6 Gbps available. So that small form factor SSD solution now is very future proof.
Aesthetics
Taste differ per person, but admittedly we do totally like the way the ASUS Z170 ROG Maximus VIII Extreme looks. The black/grey/red toned color schema combined with the nicely designs heatsinks. Yeah, it is a good looking product alright. The PCH heatsink has red LEDs to create a bit of a HALO effect coming from under the shielding, it makes the motherboard pop out of your chassis. Well visually that is. The PCB is nicely matte dark as it has received a proper coated layer, including the dark connectors, dark capacitors, with the subtle heatsinks this rocks my boat. This is just a nice looking solution for the enthusiast PC gamer and in specific the ROG aficionado.
Performance & tweaking
The overall performance in combo with the ASUS Z170 ROG Maximus VIII Extreme motherboard as such I'd rate as "very good" for a quad core Core i7 6700K. Temps remain reasonable at default clock, temperatures when the CPU is overclocked with added voltage definitely seem to be a notch better opposed to Haswell but can still rise fast and hot. Our sample is not quite stable enough at 4.9 GHz but 4.8 GHz was stable on liquid cooling. At that level we needed a lot of voltage, 1.35~1.45 volts in the processor. This is the same behavior we see on all motherboards tested thus far. The icing on top of this cake obviously is the cool OC panel. You do need to wonder though if the price premium is worth that feature. The regular user will use it a couple of times, and then let it rest inside the chassis. Whereas for the pro overclocker this thing hauls the proverbial azz.
The bottom line
looking back, the ASUS Z170 ROG Maximus VIII Extreme is not that far away from the HERO (220 EURO), also a marvelous motherboard, it has top looks and design, excellent USB connectivity, one Intel Gigabit jack and if you feel the need to tweak, there's just plenty of options in the BIOS to go nuts. Though we do not have a final price just yet we expect this board to sell in the 350 EURO range. The included WIFI solution on the Extreme however is close to perfection as far as I am concerned, the ASUS multi-band AC WIFI hauls azzzz. Your DDR4 memory can be easily configured by enabling the XMP 2.0 profile. You will gain excellent features combined with seriously nice performance and very decent energy consumption levels. I have no doubt that some of you can reach 5 GHz on this CPU, the ASUS motherboard will certainly allow for this. The reality remains though, this motherboard will allow any tweak, your challenge in terms of overclocking will be the processor and not so much the motherboards these days. The overall combination of the ASUS Z170 ROG Maximus VIII Extreme and a Core i7 6700K however is a majestic symbiosis we feel.
Aside from some very swanky features like the coolest WIFI and OC Panel I am not sure if the extra 150 bucks would be worth the price premium over the Maximus Hero, regardless plenty of you will most surely disagree with me on that. It is good to have the options though. The ASUS ROG Maximus VIII is a terrific Z170 motherboard with all the bells and whistles you need, and then some more. Regardless of the fact you choose the HERO or Extreme, you will without doubt like what you purchase. That's a Guru3D guarantee.
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