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ASUS Z170 Maximus VIII Hero (LGA 1151) Review

Final Thoughts

Pricing

The ASUS RoG Maximus VIII Hero motherboard is currently available from OverclockersUK for £169.99. In the US it can be picked up from Newegg.com for $239.99.

Summary

So there we have it, the Z170 chipset being unleashed onto the world. I can say that performance of the actual chipset isn’t a massive improvement over Z97, but performance is greatly limited to the hardware being used such as the M.2, SATA and USB drives. What the Z170 brings to the table is the absolutely huge connectivity. As standard, it comes with USB 3.1 Type A and Type C and six USB 3.0, which was previously unheard of due to the limitations of the chipset and CPU.

Something we’ve all come to love about ASUS and the RoG range is the absolutely massive software options that are included with the motherboards. All are completely optional and some a little less useful than others, but apps such as GameFirst, Key Bot and Sonic Studio add an extra dimension of usability outside of the typical daily use. When used together, you can really have an excellent advantage over the competition with record it in high-quality to show the world. Along with those, the rock solid Ai Suite proves a great addition and something that you should consider installing; especially if you aren’t completely comfortable entering the BIOS and downloading drivers and BIOS updates yourself.

This board struck me when I first opened it; I knew what it looked like from an event a few months ago, but the lighting didn’t do it justice. Finally, a manufacturer has taken the gaming colour scheme of the typical red, as used by almost all manufacturers these days and flipped it on its head; the Rog series is now grey! This is great news for almost everyone, it now means you can have a great colour variation within the case and not have to worry about the motherboard being a limiting factor. Another great feature with this is the LED system, with full RGB colour changing; you have perfect colour matching to whatever colour scheme you end up choosing.

The performance was slightly surprising; it was better than the other ASUS boards we have tested, as you would expect due to the M8H being at a higher specification level. However, compared to the ASRock and MSI boards that we have tested, it fell slightly short. That being said, the ASUS M8H is still a much cheaper option, so it weighs out. Thanks to the mainstream introduction of DDR4 memory, we have now seen a huge leap in performance that was only previously experienced on extreme systems based on the X99 chipset.

Pros