ASUS Maximus VII Impact Review
Published by Hiwa Pouri on 22.08.14Page:
Conclusion
| Overall | + | - | |
| At a first glance the Maximus VII 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 III. 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. Absolutely remarkable, that's what the ten phase power design is. ASUS really succeed in bringing even extreme overclocking to the mini-ITX form factor. |
- Design - Memory Overclocking - Layout - mini-ITX - Power Design |
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| Layout | + | - | |
| Basically, the ASUS Maximus VII Impact's layout has excellently thought. In order to make more space on this tiny PCB ASUS decided to use a daughter PCBs, one for the power design and the other for the audio solution. Furthermore, the straight SATA 6Gbps ports have been placed 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 KeyBot as well as the SoundStage button to the I/O panel. Since the CPU socket is in the center of the PCB it is possible to install even largest CPU cooler found on the market today. Another great addition is the mPCIe-slot, which in this case is compatible with M.2 (NGFF) SSDs up to PCIe 4x. | - mPCIe Slot - M.2 (NGFF) PCIe 4x Support - Power/Reset-Button onboard - Debug display - Space around the CPU socket - 4 Fan Headers (2 x Impact Fan) |
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| Performance |
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| Calculating the average of all 3D benchmarks we ran, we see that this board ranks fourth in our comparison tables, which includes values from all Z87 motherboards we've tested too. When taking the average of all 2D results, this board is able to score even better, scoring a second place. Other than that, when it comes to overclocking performance, there is not too much to say, since this board is simply perfect for any kind of extreme overclocker. On another note, we had a look at power consumption and noticed that this board burns quite some power, which is due to the high feture density. | -
3DMark 11 - 3DMark Vantage - SiSoft Sandra - Games |
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| BIOS - Overclocking |
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ASUS
has a beautiful looking BIOS when it comes to their ROG series motherboard. The
UEFI BIOS gets a black background instead of red, which was used on earlier ROG
series motherboards. Again there EzMode is also there again and it lets you
monitor different temperatures, check out system information and also set XMP
profiles. If we dig a bit deeper we als find different memory presets allowing for easier optimizations. This makes memory overclocking simpler, especially for the less experienced overclockers out there. The same goes for CPU overclocking, where you basically get the same features like with memory overclocking. A cool thing in this case is the gaming profile, since it's been done really well. When we went on to overclock our Intel Haswell sample, reaching 5.2 GHz on air was piece of cake. Apart from that a vast majority of memory ICs is supported, including CFR and BFR from Hynix and this motherboard just flies when using Samsung ICs, since you can set very tight teritary timings. Continuing with timings we see that the board is capbable of setting very good values all on its own, when it comes to RTL and IOL values. In the case of tRDWR and tRDWR-dr you can set them as low as 11 and tRDWR-dd at 7, which is only possible with ASUS Maximus VII Formula and Impact. We also had a look at Hyper and BBSE memory and noticed, that, like with all Z97 motherboards, compatibility is not too good. When we were testing stability we found out that running MFR ICs at 3.2 GHz on air is just easy, but of course you need a CPU with good IMC (integrated memory controller). We're actually using this motherboard for all our memory reviews, since in our opinion it's be best choice for this job. Last but definitely not least, the board is capable of setting excellent timings on PSC memory, which makes it piece of cake to run PSCs at 2800 with CL6. |
- Sheer amount of
options - CPU Overclocking - Memory Overclocking |
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| Recommendation |
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| Should you be looking for a high-end overclocking motherboard, then the ASUS Z97 Maximus VII Impact is a great choice. Other than that this is simply the best equipped mini ITX motherboard money can buy and compared to to competitors with same form factor, the Maximus VII Impact is just in a different league. In our opinion this can be seen as a justification for the rather high price, which is 188 Euro these days. | -
Enthusiast - Gaming - Extreme Overclocking |
- Price | |
| Rating | |||
| We give the ASUS Maximus VII Impact excellent 5 out of 5 stars. | |||
Author: m.buechel@ocaholic.ch
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ASUS Maximus VII Formula Review |
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