Connectors and I/O

ASUS has equipped the Maximus VIII Hero with eight 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 Hero 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 Hero 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.

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