Maximus VI Impact - Discussion Thread

[Raja]

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 🙂

[JC_Fed]

Has anyone had any luck feeding the spdif from windows 8.1 into a receiver? I can choose the output but get no sound at all. updated drivers, tried everything I can think of

[nadof1]

@JC Fed
Works fine for me,
have you selected Realtek Digital output (optical) as default device in the sound settings from the control panel.

[SinSoft76]

Hello im new here but have a question. I just purchased this board and noticed that their is no virtual surround sound for a stereo headset like the astro a40 which im using and have it plugged into the front audio jacks. Is this not a feature for this card or is it just the current release driver doesn't have support for it yet. I purchased this board has a small all in one gaming rig has it is a gaming board and I thought the supreme fx cards I've used in the past supported this feature. Any input on this would be very much appreciated.

[such_doge]

Hi there, regarding the sound: ASUS claims that the onboard card can drive headphones with up to 600 Ohms, however they have only recently published this information on their product page. Previous to this I have taken the liberty to contact the German ASUS support team in order to learn more about the onboard sound card, and they told me that they figured it could drive 100 Ohms max. Since the information is contradictory, I would like to know if anyone tried to connect their 600 Ohm headphones and if you can confirm that 600 Ohms are supported.

[Jytra]

There was a post near the beginning of October by Raja about how they were looking into it with Realtek, but so far nothing seems to have been changed. If you install the latest drivers from Realtek (v2.72), and plug the headphones into the front port, you get a pop-up dialogue asking if you've plugged in headphones or something else. After picking headphones, there's an option for amplify level...this is supposed to be the amp control, but it doesn't work.

So, no, headphone amplification for 600 ohm headphones doesn't work yet. I've been connecting my Beyerdynamic DT880 600 Ohm headphones to both ports, but the base is heavily clipped (making it almost nonexistent), and there appears to be an automatic volume gain control that is very aggressive with it's leveling. Makes for a really poor audio experience.

Hopefully something will get fixed soon.

[such_doge]

Thanks for the heads up. I was planning to use my 600 ohms DT990, but now it seems like I may need to wait a while to see wether or not that's even possible. It's obvious that the front port couldn't power them since the amp is built in at the back, but at least there I hope it will work soon. Well, maybe with the next model 🙂

[high_tension]

Hello guys.

I'm from Brazil and I'm new here.

I finished to build my miniITX RIG yesterday, but I'm experiencing some problems with this motherboard.

With the 8-pin CPU power plugged in, the motherboard starts, light the leds up, spin the fans and after half a second, it shuts off. If I unplugged the 8-pin CPU power connector, the mobo starts and stays powered on, but it won't appear the post screen (ok, I know this is normal because the 8-pin is not plugged in).

I already tried with two PSU: a Seasonic 850W Gold anda a Corsair AX1200. Both have the same problem. So, I think the problem is not the PSU.

I also take off the processor from socket and carefully examinate if there are no broken pins, but everything is fine. Also examinating the other parts of the motherboard, and there are no visual problems with it.

Now, I don't know what is exactly the problem, if is with the motherboard or with the CPU.

I'm using the 4770K CPU and the Asus Maximus VI Impact motherboard.

Any clues?

Thanks in advance.

PS: Sorry about my english.

[Dajinn]

I just got my rig setup with the VI Impact, but to be honest I don't really feel like the SupremeFX audio is a step up from typical AC97 at all. I installed the drivers from the ASUS site, under "Audio", Realtek Audio Driver V6.0.1.7023 for Windows 7/8/8.1 32bit & 64bit.(WHQL), because I'm using a m-ITX case with a fan controller instead of an optical drive, so I couldn't get the drivers from the disc. But anyway, does anyone have similar experience? The equalizer is okay but the clarity just isn't there like it was with my X-Fi Titanium. I feel like it can barely drive my ATH-M50s and the maximum sound volume is lower than what I'm used to.

Should I be using the front panel HD audio?

[Herstal]

Another user disappointed by audio quality here... The gain function available in current drivers (both the ones from Asus and Realtek websites) does nothing. The sound card is unable to drive my modest Sennheisers (PC350 Xense edition, 150 Ohm by specs, ~250 by multimeter), sound is very flat and bass is pretty much nonexistent. I'd return to the Xense soundcard if i could, but the only PCIE slot is already occupied...

I understand that it's probably a bug or unfinished drivers, but could you give us an ETA on a solution? The headphone amp was one of, if not THE main reason why i chose this motherboard over other, cheaper options. Getting this mobo and finding out that in the several months since its release such a glaring issue was not fixed is extremely disappointing.

[Nivaku]

Hello all, I'm still waiting on my ITX Case but I have a few questions for the BIOS settings in this mobo. Is there an option to disable the iGPU?

I have the i7 4770k and it comes with the 4600HD is there a way to disable that? I know in other ROG boards you can

Is there an iGPU in the mobo or only on the CPU itself?

Thanks in advance