Layout

At a first glance the ASUS Maximus VIII Gene looks very good with its harmonic design. Since quite a few years ASUS has decided to change the color scheme of their ROG series motherboards. There is a black matte PCB and the heatsinks feature a metallic, dark silver tone, which reflects the tone of different colors. The layout itself is well thought and there is for example plenty of space around the CPU socket to install even todays largest CPU coolers. The fact that there are SATA connectors which have been angled by 90 degrees allow for an easy installation of oversized graphics cards.

The ASUS Maximus VIII Gene comes with a digital 10+2 phase power design. The CPU gets ten phases and the memory gets a stable current supply from two individual phases. Furthermore ASUS equips this board with their so called "BlackWing Chokes". Furthermore those chokes can cope with up to 60A per phase. Furthermore there are 10K Black Metallic Capacitors, which have an average life span of 10'000 hours. The power design is overall more than powerful enough to even withstand extreme overclocking.

Totally you'll find four DIMM-slots on the Maximus VIII Gene. Officially supported are DDR4 3800 (O.C) / 3733 (O.C.) / 3600 (O.C.) / 3500 (O.C.) /3466 (O.C) / 3400 (O.C.) / 3333 (O.C.) / 3300 (O.C.) / 3200 (O.C.) / 3000 (O.C.) / 2800 (O.C.) / 2666 (O.C.) / 2400 (O.C.) / 2133.There is engough space between the DIMM-slots and the CPU socket which means that you wont encounter compatibility problems with big coolers even when you choose to install RAM with big heatspreaders. Also supported are Xtreme Memory Profiles (XMP) in version 2.0.

On the Maximus VIII Gene the PCH (Platform Controller Hub) is being cooled by a passiv cooling block. A closer look at the area where the VRM is, shows that there are two additional heatsinks, which have been connected with a heatpipe. Like they do with every new Maximus motherboards series, ASUS changed the looks of the heatsinks slightly. In our opinion ASUS once again managed to improve the looks of these coolers compared to the earlier generation.

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