Maximus VIII Formula Review:the return of the flagship with RGB

[nextpage title=”Meet The Asus ROG Maximus VIII Formula”]

The Asus ROG lineup from its inception was meant for the enthusiasts who like to stay at top. The lineup gradually matured into a foray of products which contained something for everyone at different pricepoints. Taking the current lineup Asus has eight different SKU’s for enthusiasts with different tastes and spending capabilities. Today we will be taking a look at something that belongs to the upper end of the spectrum of the ROG Z170 lineup.

Meet the ASUS ROG Maximus VIII Formula , a motherboard designed for Intel core processors Skylake with socket LGA 1151 and has the top end Z170 chipset. Boasting customizable RGB LED system,excellent integrated audio, factory-installed CrossChill EK hybrid cooling block and 2×2 802.11ac MU-MIMO Wi-Fi – The ROG MAXIMUS VIII Formula hits every every point when it comes to making an all-round motherboard.

Specifications

CPU	Intel® Socket 1151 for 6th Generation Core™ i7/Core™ i5/Core™ i3/Pentium®/Celeron® Processors
Chipset	Intel Z170
Memory	4 x DIMM, Max. 64GB, DDR4 3733(O.C.) MHz Non-ECC, Un-buffered Memory, Dual Channel Memory Architecture
Onboard Graphics Outputs	Multi-VGA output support : HDMI/DisplayPort ports – Supports HDMI with max. resolution 4096 x 2160 @ 24 Hz – Supports DisplayPort with max. resolution 4096 x 2304 @ 60 Hz Maximum shared memory of 512 MB
Multi-GPU Support	Supports NVIDIA® Quad-GPU SLI™ Technology Supports AMD 3-Way CrossFireX™ Technology
PCI Slots	2 x PCIe 3.0/2.0 x16 (x16 or dual x8, gray) 1 x PCIe 3.0/2.0 x16 (x4 mode, black) 3 x PCIe 2.0 x1 (black)
Storage	Intel® Z170 chipset : 1 x U.2 port, support PCIe 3.0 x4 NVM Express storage 1 x M.2 Socket 3, with M Key, type 2242/2260/2280/22110 storage devices support (both SATA & PCIE mode) 6 x SATA 6Gb/s port(s) 2 x SATA Express port, Support Raid 0, 1, 5, 10 ASMedia® ASM1061 controller 2 x SATA 6Gb/s port(s), black,
USB	Intel® Z170 chipset : 8 x USB 3.0 port(s) (4 at mid-board) Intel® Z170 chipset : 4 x USB 2.0 port(s) Intel® USB 3.1 controller : 2 x USB 3.1 port(s) (2 at back panel, , Type-A + Type-C) ASMedia® USB 3.0 controller : 2 x USB 3.0 port(s) (2 at back panel, blue)
Audio	ROG SupremeFX 2015 8-Channel High Definition Audio
LAN	Intel® I219V Gigabit LAN
WIFI/Bluetooth	Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac Supports dual band frequency 2.4/5 GHz Supports MU-MIMO Bluetooth V4.1
Form Factor	ATX Form Factor – 12 inch x 9.6 inch ( 30.5 cm x 24.4 cm )

[nextpage title=”Closer look at the board”]Taking a closer look at the board, the motherboard features the LGA 1151 socket to support Intel’s 6th generation of Skylake processors.

The CPU is powered by an 8-Pin connector with power being regulated by an 8+2 phase VRM controlled by a single PWM.

Short VRM Analysis for the CPU

The single CPU VRM is controlled by a single ASP1405 PWM, which is an unidentified International Rectifier PWM (most likely IR35201 or IR35203) providing 4+2 phases. The first four phases are doubled to eight phases by four IR3599 phase doublers. Those four IR3599 doublers then feed eight PWM lines to eight IR3535 MOSFET drivers. Each MOSFET driver controls a Texas Instruments CSD87350 NexFET, which produces high-quality output power. The NexFETs essentially are power blocks; each has one high-side and one low-side MOSFET built-in, to provide high efficiency at high switching frequencies for better overclocking. The iGPU gets the remaining “+2” phases and utilizes two IR3535 and two more NexFETs for power delivery and regulations.

The board features four DDR4 DIMM slots that can enable up to 64 GB of DRAM with speeds up-to 3733 MHz. The memory VRM is controlled by an ASP1105 (unknown 2+ phase PWM) and is powered by two phases made up of unidentified MOSFETs hidden behind the ROG Armor

Expansion slots include three PCI-e 3.0 x16 (x16/x8/x8 electrical) and three PCI-e 3.0 x1 slots.

For storage, we are looking at 8 SATA III (6 GB/s) ports, two SATA Express ports, and a single NVMe SSD connector along with

The onboard Audio solution is one of the main selling point for Maximus VII Formula. The Supreme FX audio solution consists of Realteks ALC1150 enhanced by an ESS Sabre ESS9023P DAC, a dedicated clock, Nichicon Gold series audio capacitors, Texas Instruments R45801 amplifier, a sense pre-amp, and an NEC relay for de-pop. Overall a nice solution that would handle a gamers need.

[nextpage title=”Product Showcase”]

[nextpage title=”Benchmarks”]Now let’s take a look at some benchmarks

Point Calculations -3D Movement Algorithm Test

The algorithms in 3DPM employ both uniform random number generation or normal distribution random number generation, and vary in various amounts of trigonometric operations, conditional statements, generation and rejection, fused operations, etc. The benchmark runs through six algorithms for a specified number of particles and steps, and calculates the speed of each algorithm, then sums them all for a final score. This is an example of a real world situation that a computational scientist may find themselves in, rather than a pure synthetic benchmark. The benchmark is also parallel between particles simulated, and we test the single thread performance as well as the multi-threaded performance.

X264 FHD

This benchmark encodes a full HD (1080p) video into a high quality x264 video. This is especially CPU intensive and prefers more cores.

X265

This benchmark encodes a full HD (1080p) video into a high quality x264 video. Like its big brother its CPU intensive and prefers more cores.

X265 Hwbot Benchmark

This benchmark is a variation of the original X265 Benchmark devolpoed by Hwbot along with a wrapper so that it can be used be for competetive benchmarking

WPrime v 1.55

wPrime uses a recursive call of Newton’s method for estimating functions, with f(x)=x2-k, where k is the number we’re sqrting, until Sgn(f(x)/f'(x)) does not equal that of the previous iteration, starting with an estimation of k/2. It then uses an iterative calling of the estimation method a set amount of times to increase the accuracy of the results. It then confirms that n(k)2=k to ensure the calculation was correct. It repeats this for all numbers from 1 to the requested maximum.

Super PI XS Mod 1.5

Super PI is a single threaded benchmark that calculates pi to a specific number of digits. It uses the Gauss-Legendre algorithm and is a Windows port of a program used by Yasumasa Kanada in 1995 to compute pi to 232 digits.Its an excellent benchmark to show single core efficiancy of a processor.

POVRAY

The Persistence of Vision RayTracer, or PovRay, is a freeware package for as the name suggests, ray tracing. It is a pure renderer, but the latest beta version contains a handy benchmark for stressing all processing threads on a platform.

Cinebench

CINEBENCH is a real-world cross platform test suite that evaluates your computer’s performance capabilities. CINEBENCH is based on MAXON’s award-winning animation software CINEMA 4D.

Dolphin Emulator Benchmark

This benchmark runs a Wii program that raytraces a complex 3D scene inside the Dolphin Wii emulator. An excellent indicator for single core cpu performance.

Kraken JavaScript

Kraken is a JavaScript performance benchmark created by Mozilla that measures the speed of several different test cases extracted from real-world applications and libraries. A good indicator of overall system performence.

WebXPRT Benchmark

WebXPRT is another free online benchmark that gives you objective information about how well a laptop, tablet, smartphone, or pc device handles common Web tasks. Another good indicator of overall system performence.

ASUS’s Maximus VIII Formula provides high performance across the board as is evident from the benchmarks.The Maximus VIII Formula manages to uphold our high expectations from the ROG lineup.

[nextpage title=”Final Thoughts And Conclusion”]

[review_bank review_id=3]