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 🙂

[ArjenP]

Hello,

I have a question about the impacts fan control. I prefer using the bios for fan control over software solutions like fan xpert. But when i select manual fancontrol in the bios i can not get the speed below 60%. Whenever i type in a lower number then 60 it tells me "invalid input". Is this supposed to happen? Im using a Corsair h100i for cooling my cpu and at 60% the fans are still running at ~1700 rpm. Which imo is way too loud for idle use. I want them to run at ~30%.

If Asus wont allow me to got below 60% speed im forced to buy some corsair sp120 quiet edition fans.

When im using Asus Fan Xpert i can get them to run from 0-100% no problem. But as stated above i prefere to use the bios for fan control.

Does anyone have some info on this? Or am I just doing something wrong here?

[Praz]

ArjenP wrote:
But when i select manual fancontrol in the bios i can not get the speed below 60%. Whenever i type in a lower number then 60 it tells me "invalid input". Is this supposed to happen?

Hello

This is correct. If you wish to use lower than 60% you will need to control the fan using software from within the operating system

[ArjenP]

Praz wrote:
Hello

This is correct. If you wish to use lower than 60% you will need to control the fan using software from within the operating system

Thx for the quick answer.

Can you tell me the reason for that 60% limit? Because imo that makes no sense at all.

[Raja]

AS illogical as it sounds, there was a spat of complaints from users who's fans would not spin up at values lower than 60%. The uproar was sufficient enough for lunacy to triumph over reason (as it so often does) and a 60% limit was introduced.

-Raja

[ArjenP]

Raja@ASUS wrote:
AS illogical as it sounds, there was a spat of complaints from users who's fans would not spin up at values lower than 60%. The uproar was sufficient enough for lunacy to triumph over reason (as it so often does) and a 60% limit was introduced.

-Raja

Thx. Ill get myself some quieter fans then;)

[Praz]

Hello

Many fans will run at 60% or lower but will not start at those speeds. Using only BIOS speed control these fans would never start. The 60% limit insures most will start and can then be lowered from withing the operating system if needed.

[silencer51]

Am I the only one who's had one of the pigtail cables from the wifi card to the rear I/O panel break? Specifically, it seems the cable connection to the RP-SMA connector is quite shoddy, it broke while transferring the motherboard from one case to another.

[Etaloche]

Hello there guys, I am in some trouble with my impact board and would appreciate some help or input

So I was almost done my build today and was doing the final assembly and went to test out all the components and my rig wouldn't start up.

All it does is tries to bootup and shuts down immediately and then loops.

The only indicators as to what's wrong are that the Q-LED flashes 00 right before shutting down and the VGA and DRAM LED flashes on for an instant when I boot.

I checked and reseated the ram since the DRAM LED was on but have no clue what the VGA LED indicates.

Prior to building I have tested all components and throughout the build I have tested them twice and everything was working about 3 days ago.

The motherboard seems to give a code of 00 which I looked up and it means "Not in use" which didn't quite make too much sense.

I looked around on the internet and found that it was a common enough issue. The answers I found were either your CPU is dead or PSU isn't hooked up correctly.

I went down to the nearest computer store and only hooked up the core components and tested all the core components.

The PSU is not the issue and since I custom made all my cables I tested each cable and they are ok as well. I tested the RAM and the CPU on a different rig and they all worked perfectly.

This only means 1 component is the issue and that is the motherboard itself.

So has anyone here have had any experiences similar to mine?


The entire rig is as follows

i7-4770k
Maximus VI Impact
R9 290X
Kingston HyperX 16GB RAM
2 x 120GB Kingston HyperX SSD
1TB WD Black HDD
550W XFX XTR

[spicyahiroll]

Hi, I'm having a problem where I cant adjust the CPU core voltage or cache voltage. Currently it's stuck at 1.18v-1.2v; no matter what I do, e.i. restore to defaults, or change the adaptive voltage values. I've even tried flashing the bios and I'm having the same problem. The bios it will retain the values I've entered; but when I monitor the voltages, either with AI tuner or HWmonitor, it's 1.8-1.2v. Because of this I haven't been able to take my 4770k past 4.2GHz; even when I run stock, 3.9GHz, it's giving too much voltage. I'm using Intel Extreme Tuning Utility for the CPU stress test.

Here's my specs:
i7 4770k
Maximus VI Impact
Asus DirectCUII Nvidia GeForce 780ti
Corsair Vengeance 1600 8-8-8-24 8GB
ADATA XPG SX900 512GB
SeaSonic G Series SSR-550RM 550W
Corsair H80i
Windows 8.1

[skadebo]

Etaloche wrote:
Hello there guys, I am in some trouble with my impact board and would appreciate some help or input

So I was almost done my build today and was doing the final assembly and went to test out all the components and my rig wouldn't start up.

All it does is tries to bootup and shuts down immediately and then loops.

The only indicators as to what's wrong are that the Q-LED flashes 00 right before shutting down and the VGA and DRAM LED flashes on for an instant when I boot.

I checked and reseated the ram since the DRAM LED was on but have no clue what the VGA LED indicates.

Prior to building I have tested all components and throughout the build I have tested them twice and everything was working about 3 days ago.

The motherboard seems to give a code of 00 which I looked up and it means "Not in use" which didn't quite make too much sense.

I looked around on the internet and found that it was a common enough issue. The answers I found were either your CPU is dead or PSU isn't hooked up correctly.

I went down to the nearest computer store and only hooked up the core components and tested all the core components.

The PSU is not the issue and since I custom made all my cables I tested each cable and they are ok as well. I tested the RAM and the CPU on a different rig and they all worked perfectly.

This only means 1 component is the issue and that is the motherboard itself.

So has anyone here have had any experiences similar to mine?


The entire rig is as follows

i7-4770k
Maximus VI Impact
R9 290X
Kingston HyperX 16GB RAM
2 x 120GB Kingston HyperX SSD
1TB WD Black HDD
550W XFX XTR

Rody wrote:
It looks like I am having the same issue as several others. My Impact spins up for a sec then resets. I have swaped all the hardware around and the only thing left is the motherboard. On a side note I also have a 2 gigabyte z87n wifi's one works the other doesent. I have a few more things to try today but I think I will be RMAing both boards.

TempesT wrote:
I too was having the same issue. I have RMA'd my board.

Wish I saw these sooner, I was having the same problem. Turned out that the directey or MemOK buttons were being pressed in by the IO shield. I wiggled them so that they popped out of the holes and all was dandy.