Product Showcase
Product Showcase
Right with the bling out of the way, let's move on-wards to the hardware. The ASUS Z170 ROG Maximus VIII Formula follows a standard form factor (30.5x24.4cm). The motherboard is located in the ROG range and is a enthusiast to high-end product within this new Skylake Z170 series motherboards.
Included with the motherboard are the regulars including; manuals, driver CDs, SATA cables and a rear IO plate. This motherboard comes with embedded AC WIFI and one Gigabit Ethernet jack from Intel. New for the ROG is the actual design, more shielding and a move from black to black grey accents. The power regulation area has an EK liquid cooling block sitting on top of it, not needed so you can stick to just air cooling of course.
- CPU support: Skylake-S class Intel Core processors
- Chipset: Intel Z170 Chipset
- 1x Gigabit Ethernet (Intel)
- Storage:
- 6x SATA 6Gb/s Intel
- 1x M.2, PCIe 32 Gb/s and shared SATA Express ports x2
- 1x U.2. port
- 2x SATA Express
- Connectivity:
- 3x PCI-E 3.0 x16 (single at x16 / dual at x8 / triple at x8 - x8 - x4)
- 3x PCI-E 3.0 x1
- USB 3.0 / 3.1
Included in the bundle is one nice looking motherboard and gear like WIFI antenna, SATA cables, SLI connectors and so on. The bundle is a little scarce to be honest, but everything needed to get you going can be found in there.
The I/O back panel reveals 3.1/3.0/2.0 ports and then a Type-C connector, the red USB 3.0 is to be used for USB flashback etc. The audio unit has special noise reducing capacitors and EMI shielding. You will spot one 10/100/1000 Gigabit Ethernet jack (Intel). Lacking is a single PS/2 combo port for either a keyboard or a mouse. We do spot optical SPDIF out port and six audio jacks. If you plan to use the integrated IGP of the processor, you can make use of a DP or HDMI connector. Included is WIFI (AC 866 Mbit).
The boards has 3 x PCIe 3.0 x16 slots (mechanical) which can be arranged in these slot configurations with graphics cards:
- 1-way mode - x16 / x0 / x0
- 2-way mode - x8 / x8 / x0
- 3-way mode - x8 / x8 / x4
As you can see these are PCI Express Gen 3.0 configurations, that's plenty for regular graphics card setups up-to 2-way SLI/Crossfire. Aesthetics wise, I have to admit, the shielding is done nicely.
The motherboard comes with an 8-pin power connector. You'll get four DIMM slots that can be used for up-to 64GB of dual-channel memory. We received the new 3200 MHz Trident-Z kit from G.skill which we'll feature in detail in this review.
