Connectors and I/O

ASUS equipped the Maximus VIII Extreme Assembly with eight angled SATA ports. All ports offer 6Gbps bandwidth and they've been natively wired to the Z170 PCH. Four SATA ports can be combined to two SATA Express connectors. ASUS also decided to equip this board with a U.2 connector, which allows you to attach an NVMe SSD with U.2 interface directly without the need for an M.2 adapter card. Right next to the SATA connectors you'll find an M.2 slot, which has been wired to the PCH using four PCI Express Gen 3 lanes offering 32Gbps of bandwidth. Having a closer look at the full-sized PCIe Gen 3 slots, the first one has been wired using 16 lanes and the second, third and fourth features eight lanes. If you want to setup an SLI/CF system the maximum you can go for is 2-way-SLI and 3-way-CrossFire. In these cases the the lane splitters will address 2-way-SLI with x8/x8 and 3-way-CF with x8/x4/x4. You'll also find practical onboard power- and reset-buttons on this board as well as a debug display. Furthermore overclockers will enjoy the voltage read-out points, retry and safe-boot button, LN2 switch, Slow Mode jumper as well as PCI Express and DRAM channel selector switch. Regarding onboard audio there is ASUS's latest SupremeFX solution implemented, which has been electrically isolated from the rest of the board and features a high-quality chain of components. In this case there are gold plated conecctors, Nichicon capacitors, an ESS ES9023P DAC, two headphone amps and a de-pop relay.

In total, there are six fan headers on the Maximus VIII Extreme Assembly's PCB. Another three come with the fan extension card, which is included in the delivery. This is definitely enough, to provide a high-end ATX system with fresh air.

Looking at the external connectors directly at the back-panel ASUS equipped the Maximus VIII Extreme Assembly with a PS/2 port, three USB 3.1 Type-A ports and one Type-C port, four 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 and a ROG Connect switch. Apart from that there is a WiFi/Bluetooth module supporting 802.11ac/4.0.

Page 1 - Introduction	Page 14 - SiSoft Sandra 2
Page 2 - Specs and Delivery	Page 15 - UC Bench
Page 3 - Features	Page 16 - Super Pi 1M / 32M
Page 4 - Layout	Page 17 - wPrime 1024M Multi Core
Page 5 - Connectors and I/O	Page 18 - Cinebench
Page 6 - BIOS	Page 19 - Tomb Raider
Page 7 - Test setup	Page 20 - Metro Last Light
Page 8 - Preview / Gallery	Page 21 - Sleeping Dogs
Page 9 - 3D Mark	Page 22 - Power Consumption
Page 10 - 3D Mark 11	Page 23 - Performance Rating
Page 11 - 3D Mark Vantage	Page 24 - Price Comparison
Page 12 - PC Mark 8	Page 25 - Conclusion
Page 13 - SiSoft Sandra 1