SFF.Network [SFF Network] ASUS announces the ROG Maximus VIII Impact

Today, ASUS is officially showing off the new ROG Maximus VIII Impact, their enthusiast Mini-ITX offering for the Z170 platform.

Read more here.

 

[brams]

From what I can tell on other photos, the IC you highlight with the ? mark is the Alpine Ridge controller, it looks like it's got a QR code on it

 

[veryrarium]

Whats the third SKU? Impact, Extreme, and? I've actually been looking to see what else may have it.

Hasn't come out yet, but it's Z170-WS according to anandtech.

 

[Vittra]

Dual M.2 and U.2, very nice. If it has ECC as well, that may be the board I go with. Thus far I've only seen a few lower end MSI boards with it. The i3's this gen are all ecc enabled, and of course the upcoming E3 V5 Xeons.

 

[veryrarium]

Vittra, I wasn't aware until just now but Maximus VIII Hero/Alpha is another board, with not only one but two SFF-8643 ports.

 

[Vittra]

Well, that's certainly interesting. That lends credence to them possibly unveiling a U.2 SSD of their own, and soon.

It's a bit odd they are now releasing variations on already established SKUs... "Extreme Assembly", "Hero/Alpha"..

 

[jeshikat]

Supposedly the reason they went with U.2 over M.2 according to Raja@ASUS:

M.2 has power constraints that limit it to 25W - to get consistent perf, higher peak currents are required. That and thermal issues that can ocur in limited space, make U.2 a better option for this type of board.

http://www.anandtech.com/comments/9...g-maximus-viii-impact-z170-motherboard/475222

 

[EdZ]

Which seems rather odd, the Intel 750 doesn't come close to the 25W limit, and even the anecdotally 'hot' SM951 is under 10W and trades blows with the 750. Unless Asus have a 25W+ power-chugging monster lurking somewhere, power limitations as a reason for omitting m.2 doesn't make sense.

 

[iFreilicht]

At this point I'm pretty sure they simply didn't have space left for it and/or have their own U.2 drive in the works. Saying that it would give better performance seems like a good way of flattening the road for such an SSD in terms of marketing.

Bit disappointed by the board, though. No reason to buy this over their own Z170I Pro gaming, at least for me.

Is Thunderbolt even confirmed for this board by now?

 

[jeshikat]

I think the power limit thing is a bit silly too.

Thunderbolt isn't mentioned in the specs anywhere. The manual has a pic of the Advanced menu in the BIOS that has an option for Thunderbolt but I think that's a copy/paste error because there are also references to M.2 which are obviously incorrect.

 

[|||]

Even if there is a power issue (which I agree there probably isn't), M.2 just makes sense with the low profile form factor on a Mini-ITX board. The Intel drive is also 15mm thick, so it may not work in mounts designed for the typical 7mm or 9mm drives...maybe there are other U.2 drives coming that are 7/9mm thick? The design decisions ASUS made with this board are questionable, to say the least.

 

[Phuncz]

Intel 750 specs: https://www-ssl.intel.com/content/d...ments/product-specifications/ssd-750-spec.pdf
Apparently the 1.2TB already hits 22W average on load, so 25W might indeed be a problem. But considering we'll have 1TB M.2's in the near future with comparable performance for a lot less $$$, this seems moot. Asus knows something we don't, apparently.

 

[Vittra]

It occurs to me they could have placed a vertical M.2 slot where they placed the U.2, if they didn't want to use the back.

They did it on the X99-Deluxe after all.

 

[BirdofPrey]

That's what I was saying, if they hadn't put the mini-SAS connector where it is, they could have used the space for a rear panel layout like the previous Impacts where the M.2 and WiFi were in a riser.

The mini-SAS would still fit if they replaced the 4 SATA slots with a second mini-SAS and put both where the SATA are now. If confusion is a problem, use SFF-8087 for the SATA ports.

 

[|||]

It'd be nice if the I/O was configurable between being used as either a U.2 port or SATA port, as discussed in the other Z170 Mini-ITX thread.

According to Intel technical documentation, the I/O is selected with soft straps (bits that are read out) or in the case of SATA Express or mSATA drive, the device that is interfaced with:

3.5 HSIO Port Selection

The HSIO port configuration is statically selected by soft straps

3.5.1 PCIe/SATA Port Selection

In addition to static configuration using soft strapsHSIO lanes that have PCIe/SATA port multiplexingcan be configured using SATAXPCIE signalling to support implementation like SATA Express or mSATA, where the port configuration is selected by the type of add-in card that is used.

Unfortunately, specifics on configuring the soft strap are in the PCH SPI Programming Guide, which is limited to those with an Intel Embedded Design Center (Intel EDC) Privileged account. So I'm still not sure if this is possible; but it would seem like it could be.