Monday, September 14th 2015
ASUS Maximus VIII Extreme Motherboard Pictured
Ahead of its launch, ASUS showed off its flagship socket LGA1151 motherboard, the ROG Maximus VIII Extreme. Based on the Intel Z170 Express chipset, this board offers the largest feature-set from ASUS' stable, for the enthusiast crowd. Built in the ATX (almost E-ATX wide) form-factor, the board retains the styling of its series siblings, such as the Maximus VIII Hero, but does away with the red+black for a more contemporary golden orange+black scheme, which made its debut with the GeForce GTX 980 Ti MATRIX Platinum graphics card (also pictured here).
The board draws power from a combination of 24-pin ATX, 8-pin EPS, and 4-pin ATX power connectors, and conditions it for the CPU with a 16-phase VRM. The CPU socket is wired to four DDR4 DIMM slots. Expansion slots include four PCI-Express 3.0 x16, from which three are wired to the CPU, and one to the PCH. All four are PCIe gen 3.0. Storage connectivity includes an SFF-8639 U.2 32 Gb/s connector, an M.2 32 Gb/s slot, two SATA-Express 16 Gb/s, and eight SATA 6 Gb/s ports. Networking includes 802.11 ac WLAN, Bluetooth 4.0, and gigabit Ethernet (all Intel controllers). The new SupremeFX onboard audio solution borrows a lot of tech from ASUS' discrete sound cards, and comes with an 5.25-inch front-panel bay with rotary controls, and front-panel jacks. The board features a boat-load of overclocker-centric features, including dual-BIOS.
The board draws power from a combination of 24-pin ATX, 8-pin EPS, and 4-pin ATX power connectors, and conditions it for the CPU with a 16-phase VRM. The CPU socket is wired to four DDR4 DIMM slots. Expansion slots include four PCI-Express 3.0 x16, from which three are wired to the CPU, and one to the PCH. All four are PCIe gen 3.0. Storage connectivity includes an SFF-8639 U.2 32 Gb/s connector, an M.2 32 Gb/s slot, two SATA-Express 16 Gb/s, and eight SATA 6 Gb/s ports. Networking includes 802.11 ac WLAN, Bluetooth 4.0, and gigabit Ethernet (all Intel controllers). The new SupremeFX onboard audio solution borrows a lot of tech from ASUS' discrete sound cards, and comes with an 5.25-inch front-panel bay with rotary controls, and front-panel jacks. The board features a boat-load of overclocker-centric features, including dual-BIOS.