Just as it was the case with the previously available ROG Maximus VII Impact motherboard based on Intel's high-end Z97 Express chipset, the new Maximus VIII Impact also features a high-end VRM part placed on a daughter-board at the edge of the motherboard. This also allowed Asus to pack plenty of high-end features on a 17x17cm mini-ITX form-factor.
Based on Intel's latest high-end Z170 Express chipset, the new Asus ROG Maximus VIII Impact features support for Intel's latest 6th generation Core Skylake CPUs, support for up to 32GB of DDR4 4133MHz memory in two DIMM slots, a single PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slot, four SATA 6Gbps ports and a single U.2 PCIe 3.0 storage port.
The rest of the features include high-end ROG SupremeFX Impact III audio with ESS Sabre ES9023P DAC, SupremeFX shielding, Sonic SenseAmp, headphone amp and LED-lighted jacks, Intel's I219-V Gigabit Ethernet with ASUS LANGuard and GameFirst technologies, integrated dual-band 802.11ac WiFi with MU-MIMO support, Bluetooth 4.1, USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-A and USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-C ports, six USB 3.0 ports and plenty of other high-end and overclocking features like on-board clear CMOS, power and reset buttons, LED post screen and more.
According to Asus, the new Republic of Gamers Maximus should be available this month with a price of around US $249.