Asus roG MaxIMus VIII ForMula
This gamers’ delight is equipped with all the myriad features but comes at higher price
The ROG Maximus VIII Formula motherboard comes with Intel Z170 Express, which is a single-chipset design that supports 6th-generation Intel LGA1151 Core i7/Core i5/Core i3/Pentium/Celeron processors. It supports Skylake architecture which is a powerful graphics engine and is very power friendly.
Combining the top-notch features: It hosts cooling masters at EK Water Blocks to create CrossChill EK, an extreme-performance cooling block with a copper channel. With G1/4in threaded fittings CrossChill EK is a quick fit for your existing setup and, when you chill with liquid, you can shrink MOSFET temperatures by up to 23˚C. This is built using high-precision laser-engraving technology enabling RGB light of 28 integrated LEDs. Also, you get an ROG’s Aura RGB Strip header, which makes it easy to cast colors across your rig and room, by simply using standard 12V RGB strips onto the 4-pin Aura RGB-strip header.
It comes with onboard professional-grade audio components, including an ESS ES9023P digital-to-analog converter (DAC) with Hyperstream technology, ultra-low-jitter clock, Nichicon capacitors, 2VRMS headphone amp, and Sonic SenseAmp that automatically detects and optimizes any headset (32-600ohms).
No Expertise Required for Overclocking: The AI Suite III software has the basic interface which more or less appears the same on all ASUS’ motherboards. This controls the USB Turbo / UASP Boost function, lets update BIOS over the internet and more. All this helps you to tune the power savings over performance and vice versa. The settings are not on a single page and display each category, enabling users to understand at a quick glance.
The motherboard can be customized easily as per your needs as 5-way optimization sorts all the complex settings with a click. This dynamically optimizes essential aspects of your system based on real-time use. Its user-friendly BIOS UI enables you to make changes as required. The overclocking isn’t an easier task, however, the software makes it quite easy. Overclocking worked perfectly and we didn’t find any issue due to a bad overclock.
AURA LED: ASUS motherboard has the new Aura application that allows you setup the LED colors, brightness and effects patterns. The RGB header and standard 5050 RGB LED strips can be controlled independently from each other.
Performance: We used a test bed comprising 3.5 GHz Intel Core i5 CPU, AMD Radeon R7 GPU, 8 GB of Zion DDR4 RAM and Seagate 2 TB of Hard Drive and installed Windows 10 OS. To check its capability, we used three benchmarks as well as some real-life tests.
We played some high graphics intensive games, like Shadow of Mordor, and there was no lag in the performance. While running the game, we ran few other applications such as MS-office, Chrome, and Mozilla browsers, having 10 tabs open in each. Still it handled them efficiently, without any performance lag. In PC Mark 8 Work test suite that checks performance in web browsing, video chat and spreadsheet tests, it scored 5074 which is decent for a gaming board . In 3D Mark Fire Strike Extreme, the enhanced version of Fire Strike designed for high-end multi-GPU systems (SLI / Crossfire) and future hardware generations, which measures graphics power, it scored 1922. It scored 3203.2 on PassMark Performance Test 8.0 which includes performance of CPU, GPU, RAM, etc. and 3479 on 3D Graphics Mark measuring the graphics performance. Overall, these scores suggest that this board is par for the course for gamers.
Bottomline: The motherboard is an ideal choice for gamers as it not only looks good but also comes equipped with almost every required feature. It’s available at a higher price, so it can’t be the first choice for budget conscious gamers.