Final Words & Conclusion
Final Words & conclusion
Let me first get this out of the way, all motherboards tweak and overclock roughly similar with your processor, in fact the success or fail in overclocking lies more in cooling and the ASIC quality of your proc rather than the motherboard these days. The next thing in line is the motherboard, the design, the build quality and its feature set. ROG is designed by the ASUS Republic of gamers team and traditionally always offed red/black motherboards catered to overclockers and enthusiast gamers. The Hero series is now also thrown into the flurry and it seems that the motherboards are getting closer and closer to each other in terms of features. 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 product 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 Hero motherboard certainly is impressive and does perform really well, actually I ended being impressed much like the Deluxe we tested. Intel doesn't make and thus offer any reference motherboards anymore, so it is hard to define a reference processors performance point as the board mother-partners will do everything in their power to tweak out the last bit of performance. And sure, that's not a bad thing but there can be some platform (brand) performance differences. But yeah, the extra perf you see is mostly related to the higher base clocks. That's just the processor side, I mean the Z170 offer it all in terms of features, stability and reliability really, heaps of USB 3.0/3.1 connectors, plenty SATA3 ports, super fast M.2., a fantastic audio solution and so on.
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, some manufacturers will 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. Interesting I find to be the developments on the M.2 interface, pop in a 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 Hero 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 Hero motherboard as such I'd rate as "really 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 still can rise fast and hot. Our sample was 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 behaviour we see on all motherboards tested thus far.
The bottom line
You know aside from colors and some PCB differences, the ASUS Z170 ROG Maximus VIII Hero is not that far away from the Deluxe, a marvelous motherboard, it has sexy looks and design, excellent USB connectivity, one Intel Gigabit jacks and if you feel the need to tweak, there's just plenty of options in the BIOS to go nuts. 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 overall combination of the ASUS Z170 ROG Maximus VIII Hero and a Core i7 6700K however is a majestic symbiosis we feel. Definitely recommended. I would have liked to see WIFI included, the ASUS multi-band AC WIFI hauls azzzz and I feel anno 2015 all motherboards should have some sort of WIFI at default in an encreasibly wireless world. It's pretty much the only nag I have though. Though we do not have a final price just yet we expect this board to sell for just under 230 EURO. The hero is just a lovely motherboards and comes recommended by Guru3D.com
Update: the suggested retail rpice for this product is € 210
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