Maximus VI Impact - Discussion Thread

[Raja@ASUS]

Maximus VI Impact Overview

Over the past few years, ASUS have led the way for innovation on small form-factor motherboards. It was only a matter of time before the ROG team would take on a mini-ITX project and take things to a new level.

The ROG brand is synonymous with gaming and overclocking oriented feature sets. We wanted to make a mini-ITX motherboard that could be used as a fully-fledged gaming machine and provide an overclocking experience on-par with full sized ATX motherboards - without sacrificing desirable features. A tall order, because the mini-ITX form factor is limited to a lone full length PCIe slot, which any gamer will want to populate with a discrete GPU.

That means on-board audio has to be good, however, there’s a very limited amount of space on the PCB to implement the additional circuitry required to ensure high quality audio reproduction. The same goes for power delivery. Adequate current needs to be available, but limited PCB space means that the power delivery circuit will soon infringe on space required for other on-board components and leave little room for most aftermarket CPU coolers. That's without taking space for things like on-board WiFi, Bluetooth, mPCIE space and the number of fan headers into account - things that enthusiasts want or expect to find on a gaming or overclocking oriented motherboard. We needed to find ways around these constraints whilst meeting enthusiast requirements. After a lengthy development and tuning period, these challenges have been more than met. Take a gander at the Maximus VI Impact:

ROG Maximus VI Impact - the full gamut of ROG features within a mini-ITX footprint

There's a lot more the picture above doesn't show. From compatibility with a slew of aftermarket CPU coolers with backplates to a comprehensive software suite including Gamefirst II, Sonic Radar, SSD Secure Erase and the ability to passthrough audio in standby mode. We're not going to delve into the ins and outs of all of those features today, but we are going to show you how well this little board can overclock a CPU:

We'll kick off with a 12 hour stress test pass (more to follow):

4.6GHz DDR3-2400 16GB (2x8GB) 12 hours of AIDA passed

The power delivery daughter-board is an 8+2 phase solution, capable of pushing Haswell processors to maximum frequency without being a bottleneck. 4.6GHz watercooled is pretty easy. Higher frequencies fully loaded are possible with adequate cooling, too.



ETA in North America is mid~late August. We'll update with more specifics soon

[Zebeyo]

Edit: Nevermind

[RTFM] - Read the ****ing manual

[Raja@ASUS]

If only everyone were as resourceful as you! :P

[Zebeyo]

If only everyone were as resourceful as you! :P

Heh yeah it wasn't so bad after all. I am surprised you didn't include screws for the extension cards though.

I will say one thing though. I hope I never have to change any components in this machine (I'm online from it now DD ) Cause god damn fitting that board in this small body with all those extension cards, and the I/O plate with the pillow to avoid vibration or dust or whatever... It nearly killed me. Took half my time in putting it together just to get the damn board into position and screwed it tight.

On the positive side it looks absolutely amazing with the G.Skill RAM's red heatsink, the red LED in the fan of my cooler and the with the Asus 770 DCII attached ;D - Writing this also looks pretty good on the ASUS 27" VG278HE :P

[CANheSE3me]

.... What the heck is up Europe recieving the board already and we dont even have an exact ETA or a price for North America...

[Raja@ASUS]

We have a different schedule to the rest of the world and shipping/distribution networks are not the same the world over. For the USA the ETA is end of August, price TBD. As soon as we have more info we'll post it.

[Drerex]

You guys are killing me! Now the end of August? I was hoping for at least mid August.

[Raja@ASUS]

End of Aug would be a safer bet given distribution etc.

[Drerex]

Raja, at least tell me that the Impact is going to have the C2 Stepping.

[Raja@ASUS]

I'd think so given the time frame of launch - will have to ask. CONFIRMED, retail boards in our region (NA) will be C2.