Connectors and I/O

ASUS has equipped the Maximus VIII Ranger with six angled SATA ports. All ports offer 6Gbps bandwidth and all SATA III ports are natively wired to the Z170 PCH. Furthermore four SATA ports can be combined to two SATA Express connectors. Right below the SATA connectors you'll find a M.2 slot, which has been wired to the PCH using four PCI Express Gen 3 lanes. Having a closer look at the full-sized PCIe Gen 3 slots, the first one has been wired using 16 lanes and the second one features eight lanes. You'll also find practical onboard power- and reset-buttons on this board as well as a debug display. Regarding onboard audio there is ASUS' latest SupremeFX solution. Also on this version of ASUS' SupremeFX audio solution there are high quality Nichicon capacitors as well as an ES9023P DAC.

  

There is a total of six fan header on the Maximus VIII Ranger which is more than enough, to provide a well equipped ATX system with fresh air. The fan header are located around the CPU socket as spread over the motherboard. ASUS decided to use 4-pin PWM headers in all seven cases. Therefore it is possible to adjust rotation speed in the BIOS or in Windows. One of the headers is marked "W-Pump", which offers a greater control range in order to better adjust pump speeds of all-in-one water pumps.

  

  

Looking at the external connectors directly at the back-panel ASUS equipped the Maximus VIII Ranger with a PS/2 port, two USB 3.1 Type-A ports and one Type-C port, two USB 3.0 ports, one gigabit ethernet port, an HDMI and a DisplayPort connector as well as an optical out and an analogue audio panel. Furtheremore you'll find also a clear CMOS button.