Connectors and I/O

ASUS equipped the Maximus VIII Extreme 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'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 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 4 - Layout
Page 2 - Specs and Delivery	Page 5 - Connectors and I/O
Page 3 - Features	Page 6 - Conclusion