ASUS Maximus VI Impact Review
Published by Marc Büchel on 25.07.13Conclusion
| Overall | + | - | |
| At a first glance the Maximus VI Impact definitely leaves an excellent impression. The mix of overclocking features and a high quality audio hardware makes this a state-of-the-art motherboard for mini-ITX-gaming. And next to a very nice looking design you find useful features like for example GameFirst. This software allows you to configure your network device the way gaming traffic gets prioritized (keyword traffic shaping). Furthremore you get ASUS' RAM Disk Software and lots of other goodies, which make this board even more appealing. Aboslutely remarkable, that's what the ten phase power design is. ASUS really succeed in bringing even extrem overclocking to the mini-ITX form factor. | -
Design - Layout - mini-ITX |
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| Layout | + | - | |
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Basically the ASUS Maximus VI Impact's Layout has excellently thought. In order to make more space on this tiny PCB ASUS deployed to daughter PCB's, whereas one is for the power design and the other for the audio solution. Furhtermore the straight SATA 6Gbps ports have been place at the only location where it makes sense to have them, when you look at this point from the accessibility perspective. Also due to space contraints ASUS has put the debug LED, the MemOK as well as the DirectKey button to the I/O panel. Since the CPU socket is in the center of the PCB it is possible to install even todays largest CPU cooler. Another great addition is the mPCIe-Slot, which in this case is compatible with M.2 (NGFF) SSDs. Unfortunately this slot has only been wired to one PCI Express 2.0 x1 lane, which means, that maximum transfer speeds won't surpass 500 Megabyte per second. |
- mPCIe Slot - M.2 (NGFF) Support - Power/Reset-Button onboard - Debug display - Space around the CPU socket |
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| Performance | + | - | |
| Let's first have closer look at overall 3D performance. Calcualting the average of all 3D benchmarks we ran, we see that this board ranks in the center of our comparison tables. Concerning the average of all 2D performance, this board scores an excellent 2nd place. Furthermore, when we dig deeper into the individual results, we see that this board offers consitent performance. On another note we had a look at power consumption and in this case we see that for a mini-ITX board it's quite high. Basically it needs as much power as an average ATX motherboard, but since there are as many features as you usually find on an ATX motherboard, these numbers are easy to understand. | -
SiSoft Sandra - wPrime - Cinebench |
- Sleeping Dogs High | |
| Overclocking / BIOS | + | - | |
| As you might have expected from ASUS you get an excellent BIOS which offers not only a boatload of tuning and tweaking options but is also very easy to use. The ROG themed BIOS always comes with a bit more of a technical touch but it is still very well structured and it won't take long until one understands what's where. | - Clear arrangement - Sheer amount of options | ||
| Recommendation | + | - | |
| If you're looking for a high-end mini-ITX motherboard, then there is no way around the ASUS Maximus VI Impact. This board features everything that makes the heart of an overclocker or a gamer beat faster and also enthusiasts will love this exclusive piece of hardware. The only drawback: it's quite expensive. | -
Enthusiast build - Overclocking - Gaming |
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| Rating | |||
| We give the ASUS Maximus VI Impact excellent 5 out of 5 stars. | |||
Author: m.buechel@ocaholic.ch
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