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ROGBot
There is part I:
https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?82398-Asus-Maximus-VIII-Extreme-FlanK3r-user-review-AIR-LN...
3. The motherboard description
Motherboard Maximus Extreme VIII, is like most Extreme versions in the e-ATX size. Motherboard is therefore relatively wide and therefore, beware if you can put into the case. Slightly changed color. ROG were before several reds, now prevails clearly black and red in smaller amounts appearing only on the pasive of PCH and the cover plate over the VRM cooling.
The rear side of the board has a "backplates". In the caset of VRM as a good heat distribution for mosfets and for PCH primarily as reinforcement. It is seen that Maximus Extreme VIII is luxuriously board.
Deployment of PCIe slots is solved well. Long PCIe x16 are electrically: PCIe x16, PCIe x4, PCIe x2, PCIe x8 (designed for SLI / CF), PCIe x2 and x4 PCIe. For that you will know that the involvement of two cards will be as 2x 8 lines, and if you connect three cards will run as x8 + x4 + x4.
The audio part is called SupremeFX 2015. Most part is hiding under the plastic cover labeled "SuperemeFX". At my photo is visible only the relays, sound Nichicon capacitors and a corner of the sound chip ALC1150. The rest as a headphone amplifier, transmitter and signal processor are under cover.
Bottom part of mottherboard provides connectors for connecting PC case, interesting for someone can be a thunderbolt header or ROG connector (for OC panel or Front Panel Base) or header for fans extender ( which is part of the package). Interesting is button SLI / CF. First, before I had board in my hands, I thought that it could come in handy for hardware activation of two graphics cards. However, this is only an slot indication where to put two graphics cards (such help). BIOS button is switch BIOS function, the motherboard has two removable Winbond BIOS chips.
Outputs for connecting drives offer not only classical SATA 6Gb / s (no SATA 3Gb / s) or less advanced SATA Express and ultaquick U.2 connector for special discs. Behind pointed SATA ports can be found M.2 for SATA / PCIe SSDs. Perfect are two USB 3.0 headers, one even angled! And we also see the connector of backlighting southern bridge.
View of the OC zone and also the already mentioned USB 3.0 headers. Above the post display is connector for water pump, that we are now through the BIOS or software to control too! There are also buttons, start, reset, mem OK, safe boot, retry button, switch active/deactive PCIe slots, switch to the slow mode at extreme clock, LN2 jumper or jumper for activating / deactivating DIM slots. Who would be interested in this more, please ask in the discussion and I will try to explain everything to you more detailed....
Finally, should not be missed shot on the back-output IO motherboard, these are truly perfect. From left to right they are: buttons to erase the BIOS settings and flashback BIOS (it is uploading BIOS without having CPU, RAM, etc. on the board, you must just keep the ATX power on the board 24 pin connector. This feature is useful when you have damage BIOS or in the future, when you will buy Kabylake and you do not have the required BIOS on the board in advance)
Furthermore 2x USB3, 2x USB3.1-A, WiFi / Bluetooth, DisplayPort and HDMI for iGPU, LAN port, USB3.1 and USB3.1-A-C / Thunderbolt, PS2, audio outputs, including optical output.
Power management,circuits of motherboard and few chip details
The power circuit of motherboards and discrete chips description is the chapter, which many readers skip or is it lost forever. After a few years, I am aware of that :), but you do not want to cheat at least a gross basis. It would be a shame not to know, according to what you can also choose a new motherboard.
I have indicated in green color power connectors at motherboard as CPU and the motherboard itself. It is not necessary to injoy both CPU connectors, two are for the case of extreme overclocking.
Yellow color then I framed each PWM connectors for fan and water pump. There are a total eight connectors including a connector for connecting the fan extender.
Red highlight is the circuit power for processor (8 phases) and for iGPU part of CPU (4 phases). Yellow highlighting is power phase for the south bridge. Orange highlight one phase for the IO the CPU. Blue color is 2-phases for memory. Small pink squares are the individual PWM digital controllers for the CPU, iGPU part of the processor and digital controller of memory circuit.
I finally called the arrow keys, which PCIe slots are connected to the processor and to the south bridge. South bridge is brand new on the Z170 includes a PCIe 3.0, which is a luxury that's still not up to X99. This allows, for example, be used more than efficiently new PCIe drives.
Part detail of processor vrm phases. We see output capacitors and behind the massive chokes. Mosfets are below the VRM pasive, which is cool it. Cooling of the MOSFET is generally important not only for overclocking, but also for the operating characteristics and service life of the whole.
There are the details of PCIe switches from Asmedia. Bottom right we see a chip labeled as "BIOS". But it is not the BIOS chip, but the chip to provide function BIOS flashback.
The theory behind us and we can go to the actual testing 🙂
4. Test components and description / test settings
Intel core i7-6700K 4/4.2 GHz
Asus Maximus VIII Extreme
Silverstone AiO Tundra SLim
Asus GTX980Ti Poseidon Platinum
2x 4 GB G.SKill TridentZ 2133 MHz jedec/3600MHz XMP
SSD Intel 60GB+3TB HDD
Windows 7 SP1 x64
Test programs and games:
Superpi
wprime 1.55
Cinebench R11.5
Cinebench R15
AIDA 64 Engineer, memory bandwith
3D Mark 11
3D Mark Fire Strike
Alien vs Predator test (max possible settings at FHD)
Sniper Elite II (FHD settings and Extreme details)
Far Cry 4 (see pictures bellow), section of the game running out and driving a car in the first part of the mission and the subsequent missions by the river as the second result
WOT – max possible details and settings at FHD+high texture pack, map Murovanka, replay
Counter Strike: GO - timedemo of battle, max possible settings at FHD
https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?82398-Asus-Maximus-VIII-Extreme-FlanK3r-user-review-AIR-LN...
3. The motherboard description
Motherboard Maximus Extreme VIII, is like most Extreme versions in the e-ATX size. Motherboard is therefore relatively wide and therefore, beware if you can put into the case. Slightly changed color. ROG were before several reds, now prevails clearly black and red in smaller amounts appearing only on the pasive of PCH and the cover plate over the VRM cooling.
The rear side of the board has a "backplates". In the caset of VRM as a good heat distribution for mosfets and for PCH primarily as reinforcement. It is seen that Maximus Extreme VIII is luxuriously board.
Deployment of PCIe slots is solved well. Long PCIe x16 are electrically: PCIe x16, PCIe x4, PCIe x2, PCIe x8 (designed for SLI / CF), PCIe x2 and x4 PCIe. For that you will know that the involvement of two cards will be as 2x 8 lines, and if you connect three cards will run as x8 + x4 + x4.
The audio part is called SupremeFX 2015. Most part is hiding under the plastic cover labeled "SuperemeFX". At my photo is visible only the relays, sound Nichicon capacitors and a corner of the sound chip ALC1150. The rest as a headphone amplifier, transmitter and signal processor are under cover.
Bottom part of mottherboard provides connectors for connecting PC case, interesting for someone can be a thunderbolt header or ROG connector (for OC panel or Front Panel Base) or header for fans extender ( which is part of the package). Interesting is button SLI / CF. First, before I had board in my hands, I thought that it could come in handy for hardware activation of two graphics cards. However, this is only an slot indication where to put two graphics cards (such help). BIOS button is switch BIOS function, the motherboard has two removable Winbond BIOS chips.
Outputs for connecting drives offer not only classical SATA 6Gb / s (no SATA 3Gb / s) or less advanced SATA Express and ultaquick U.2 connector for special discs. Behind pointed SATA ports can be found M.2 for SATA / PCIe SSDs. Perfect are two USB 3.0 headers, one even angled! And we also see the connector of backlighting southern bridge.
View of the OC zone and also the already mentioned USB 3.0 headers. Above the post display is connector for water pump, that we are now through the BIOS or software to control too! There are also buttons, start, reset, mem OK, safe boot, retry button, switch active/deactive PCIe slots, switch to the slow mode at extreme clock, LN2 jumper or jumper for activating / deactivating DIM slots. Who would be interested in this more, please ask in the discussion and I will try to explain everything to you more detailed....
Finally, should not be missed shot on the back-output IO motherboard, these are truly perfect. From left to right they are: buttons to erase the BIOS settings and flashback BIOS (it is uploading BIOS without having CPU, RAM, etc. on the board, you must just keep the ATX power on the board 24 pin connector. This feature is useful when you have damage BIOS or in the future, when you will buy Kabylake and you do not have the required BIOS on the board in advance)
Furthermore 2x USB3, 2x USB3.1-A, WiFi / Bluetooth, DisplayPort and HDMI for iGPU, LAN port, USB3.1 and USB3.1-A-C / Thunderbolt, PS2, audio outputs, including optical output.
Power management,circuits of motherboard and few chip details
The power circuit of motherboards and discrete chips description is the chapter, which many readers skip or is it lost forever. After a few years, I am aware of that :), but you do not want to cheat at least a gross basis. It would be a shame not to know, according to what you can also choose a new motherboard.
I have indicated in green color power connectors at motherboard as CPU and the motherboard itself. It is not necessary to injoy both CPU connectors, two are for the case of extreme overclocking.
Yellow color then I framed each PWM connectors for fan and water pump. There are a total eight connectors including a connector for connecting the fan extender.
Red highlight is the circuit power for processor (8 phases) and for iGPU part of CPU (4 phases). Yellow highlighting is power phase for the south bridge. Orange highlight one phase for the IO the CPU. Blue color is 2-phases for memory. Small pink squares are the individual PWM digital controllers for the CPU, iGPU part of the processor and digital controller of memory circuit.
I finally called the arrow keys, which PCIe slots are connected to the processor and to the south bridge. South bridge is brand new on the Z170 includes a PCIe 3.0, which is a luxury that's still not up to X99. This allows, for example, be used more than efficiently new PCIe drives.
Part detail of processor vrm phases. We see output capacitors and behind the massive chokes. Mosfets are below the VRM pasive, which is cool it. Cooling of the MOSFET is generally important not only for overclocking, but also for the operating characteristics and service life of the whole.
There are the details of PCIe switches from Asmedia. Bottom right we see a chip labeled as "BIOS". But it is not the BIOS chip, but the chip to provide function BIOS flashback.
The theory behind us and we can go to the actual testing 🙂
4. Test components and description / test settings
Intel core i7-6700K 4/4.2 GHz
Asus Maximus VIII Extreme
Silverstone AiO Tundra SLim
Asus GTX980Ti Poseidon Platinum
2x 4 GB G.SKill TridentZ 2133 MHz jedec/3600MHz XMP
SSD Intel 60GB+3TB HDD
Windows 7 SP1 x64
Test programs and games:
Superpi
wprime 1.55
Cinebench R11.5
Cinebench R15
AIDA 64 Engineer, memory bandwith
3D Mark 11
3D Mark Fire Strike
Alien vs Predator test (max possible settings at FHD)
Sniper Elite II (FHD settings and Extreme details)
Far Cry 4 (see pictures bellow), section of the game running out and driving a car in the first part of the mission and the subsequent missions by the river as the second result
WOT – max possible details and settings at FHD+high texture pack, map Murovanka, replay
Counter Strike: GO - timedemo of battle, max possible settings at FHD
