News Asus ROG Z170 lineup

ASUS ROG Z170 MAXIMUS VIII Motherboards Lineup Unveiled
ASUS is introducing several motherboards based on the 100-series chipsets but we are specifically going to talk about just four. What’s so special about the four boards we are talking today? All of these boards feature Z170 chipset and support Skylake processors but these boards are also part of the ROG family. In fact, these are the eight iteration of the ROG Maximus family hence the MAXIMUS VIII in the branding. All four boards being part of the ROG family feature the best and quality components that are aimed towards hardware enthusiasts and gamers. These four products include the flagship, ROG Maximus VIII Extreme, the performance Maximus VIII Hero, the compact Maximus VIII Gene and the mainstream Maximus VIII Ranger motherboards.

Read more: WCCFTech

 

[jeshikat]

I'm liking the Gene, the more subdued red is nice. Board layout is nothing unexpected though. I'm hoping there will be a Z170 Impact that makes good use of the extra 4 3.0 lanes over previous generations.

In the future though, please don't copy the entire article:

Body: Please include the first paragraph or first few sentences from the article using the quote tags. Do NOT quote the entire article.

https://smallformfactor.net/forum/threads/news-section-rules-read-before-posting.20/

 

[Phuncz]

Ah my mistake, I wasn't aware posting on the forum worked it's way to the frontpage. I was under the assumption only the replies worked on both ends. Excellent !

Indeed the less invasive red accents are more my taste too, although the all-black EVGA does strike a cord with me too.

 

[jeshikat]

It doesn't get automatically cross-posted to the frontpage as an article or anything. The rule about limiting news posts to just a few sentences or at most a paragraph is for copyright reasons and to encourage people to visit the original source of the article.

 

[Phuncz]

Ah OK, I've edited the post accordingly

 

[iFreilicht]

The lack of the VIII Impact is disappointing, but not surprising. IIRC, the VII series didn't include the mITX variant in the first unveiling either. Still, a bit disheartening to see that ASUS doesn't give mITX as much priority.

 

[Phuncz]

I'd guess their main sellers like the Hero are put on the market first to earn back their research costs and when they deem there is enough budget left, they'll launch an mITX variant. Asus will launch an non-ROG mITX board most likely but the ROG version isn't something I'd be certain about.

As a consumer, I would also be vary careful about their next mITX board, the VII Impact had it's share of manufacturing issues like solder blobs in the daughterboard sockets and overtightened screws almost impossible to loosen without deforming a bracket. And I also wasn't very happy with using their unstable AiSuite 3 software (on Windows 7 !) which caused fans to oscillate a few 100rpm and random crashes just opening their software. And this was the most expensive retail mITX board on the market, before the X99E-ITX arrived from ASRock.

 

[WiSK]

I still don't believe those were solder blobs, just bent/crushed metal from the female bits inside the connector housing. As I recall the post(s) the user said he first tried to fit the daughterboard, and when it didn't go in easily, only then he looked inside. So I'm thinking a couple of the female bits weren't seated correctly, the guy tries to install, pushes fairly hard, enough to bend some metal. Then when he looked inside he thought it was solder. The blurry photos were inconclusive, and the only way to tell really is to rip the plastic housing off the board.

But yeah, although Asus high end mini ITX boards are improving in functionality, I agree about being wary

 

[veryrarium]

Would be nice if ASUS include an SFF-8643 on their high end mITX board(s) as well in addition to an M.2 slot:

 

[Phuncz]

I agree, especially now that SATA Express is DOA. No idea why they keep including it, is there a SATA Express device in sight after the 2 years or so that these connectors have been implemented ? I'd rather have 2x U.2 ports than any amount of SATA Express.