cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

Maximus VI Impact - Discussion Thread

Raja
Level 13

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 🙂








313 Views
239 REPLIES 239

stock cooler no bent pins its been working fine for well over a month no over clocking just optimized default and XMP on the mermory

HG002 wrote:
stock cooler no bent pins its been working fine for well over a month no over clocking just optimized default and XMP on the mermory
Have you tried different PSU?

Classic_GOD wrote:
Have you tried different PSU?

Yes different PSU

HG002
Level 7
The only thing I noticed on inspection was around the CPU socket just above the two screws was some clear plastic sheet that is slightly delaminated similar stuff that's on the daughter board protective cover to stop scratching

Classic_GOD
Level 10
There shouldn't be anything like that there, can you take a picture?

iExoDe
Level 7

Steve_N__Mavron
Level 8
Can anyone tell me the heights off the motherboard of both the VRM and SFX riser cards? This is in relation to determining CPU air cooler position and clearance issues. Thanks.

silencer51
Level 7
Apparently the Broadcom 802.11ac adapter that comes with this motherboard doesn't play very nicely with some routers. While I've never had any problem whatsoever connecting all of my devices to my home 802.11n router, the Impact simply won't connect. The few times that I've managed to secure a connection, speeds are dismal.

I've tried most of the tips suggested on various internet forums regarding this Broadcom chipset to no avail.

This is incredibly disappointing. I tried a new BCM driver that was released today and it made things even worse (now I can't even make it past the initial connection steps).

Are there any plans for fixing this in the near future? Anyone else run into problems with this wifi chipset?

Hey guys, I am back with more questions 😄

Is there any scoop on a new, improved version on the Impact featuring the Z97?

Is anyone using the M.2 slot? Can it reach nice speeds? Does anyone know if it's capped at some point of if ~2 GB/s could be possible assuming a M.2 SSD featuring these speeds is going to be released soon.

Alternatively, would it be possible to somehow get an acceptable audio solution without sacrificing the PCIe x16 slot needed for the GPU? Like could we get the nice engineers at ASUS to make one which could be powered by an onboard USB2.0 connector or maybe ditch the Bluetooth/WiFi combo in favour of another PCIe x2 slot or something? I mean, who needs Bluetooth? And no serious gamer would use WiFi anyway, so it might as well be optional.

Also, does anyone use the Bitspower or EK fullcover waterblocks designed for this board? How is the cooling? Any temps available with and without OC?

GL & HF

mfilos
Level 7
What a lovely board! I just installed mine today with a 4771 CPU and didn't have a single issue.
I used a Noctua NH-L12 heatsink with a single fan (the second went on the case) on Silverstone SG-06 case which is rather small.

Some pics of the setup are the following:

33381 33382 33383 33384 33385

One thing that I didn't expect and I haven't saw anywhere in manuals or speccs is that the eSATA port is compatible with my Drobo S storage which required port multiplier and never worked in my previous mobos (alas had to use it via USB 2.0). Now it worked like a charm and I was so happy about it 🙂

Thanks Asus and ROG! This board is a the Ambassador of the Qwan when it comes to mini-itx boards 🙂