Gadgetory

what's up guys welcome back to the channel today I'm checking out one of the most highly anticipated motherboards to support six gen skylake processors on the z170 chipset this is the ASUS Maximus 8 formula and it's the latest addition to the brands rog lineup it's also the latest addition to my pile of stuff that doesn't suck coming in at a hefty $400 MSRP now might be a good time to have a sit-down with mom and dad about your next allowance race the first of many robust features this board brings to the table is its stealthy rog armor which includes a plastic shield on the front to minimize dust buildup and a metal backplate for reducing potential board flexing and trace damage thermal pads beneath the backplate also aid in cooling the vrm as we've seen on other asus boards like the saber-tooth x99 the overall aesthetic of the Maximus 8 formula is a big win in my book as the rog armor appears ferociously badass without overdoing it or seeming tacky one of the formulas ki cosmetic features is a neutral black and silver color scheme which deviates from the red accents traditionally found on ROG offerings this design choice serves to complement the board's built-in RGB LEDs so the consumers finally have a motherboard that looks good with any color on the spectrum as you and I both know having RGB lighting on a component that has a loud color scheme is kind of like going to Hometown Buffet on a strict vegan diet it's kind of pointless unless you're really into salad or something I'm always amazed to see how many vendors miss this simple concept but fortunately asus has nailed this one on the head putting the RGB stuff on pause for now here's a look at the LGA 1151 socket for Intel Core 6 gen skylake CPUs I've been informed that without this the motherboard will not work the extreme engine digi+ vrm features micro fine alloy chokes next fed MOSFETs and 10k black metallic capacitors a great reminder that the more patented words you use to describe your components the better they are for those of you with an appetite for liquid cooling asus has teamed up with EK to deliver a beautiful and functional water block for your vr m the inlet and outlet support G and a quarter inch fittings and while I haven't dissected the block myself a great review I found on bit tech praise the heatsink for making direct contact with the vrn whereas other integrated blocks often see less coverage than women's golf when testing the block with a custom loop and 240 millimeter radiator the bit tech crew found the VRMs to run 5 degrees celsius cooler than air alone I'd call that a success and having ek in the mix certainly gives us water block some street cred whether you're cooling on air or liquid for ram we have four ddr4 slots which support XMP profiles dual channel memory a 64 gig max capacity and speeds up to 37 33 megahertz PCIe connectivity includes 3 gen 2x1 slots and 3 gen 3 by 16 slots supporting to a SLI and 3-way crossfire with the following operating speeds you see here based on your GPU configuration in its usual spot our z170 chipset hides behind a lovely brushed metallic piece of rog armor as we'll see in a moment the RGB integration here is fantastic giving this chipset a lot more curb appeal than this one on the storage front we get six SATA six ports running off z170 and two additional SATA six powered by an as midi controller you also get a pair of SATA Express ports and a single u2 for nvme storage devices since PCIe lanes don't grow on trees the u2 and one of the SATA Express ports share bandwidth with the m2 slot that's hidden by a removable cover here both SATA and PCIe gen3 buy four drives up to 110 millimeters in length are supported one of our SATA 6 ports is also sharing its bandwidth with the bottom PCIe by 16 slot which is set to X 2 speed by default we have rog supreme FX onboard sound chip equipped with a beefed up amp deck and ninja con capacitors quality sounded crystal clear and I was able to hit a nice max volume with my 250 ohm DT 880 pros to enhance the listening experience further sonic studio 2 lets users optimize their sound profile for gaming or inferior forms of entertainment familiar onboard features include a debug led with error code output for assistive troubleshooting and backlit power and reset buttons the ever so useful memo K button also makes its return to help correct certain initialization or frequency issues with your DRAM that prevent your system from posting here's a look at our four PWM chassis fan headers - more for the CPU cooler and a dedicated header for a i/o water cool pumps you also get 3t sensor connectors for hooking up optional temperature leads to monitor your systems thermals other features include two USB two and two USB 3 headers and I particularly like the right angle orientation of this connector for cleaner cable routing now one of the more recent additions to ROG boards is a dedicated built-in header for RGB LED strips running an LED strip off the motherboard instead of directly from the power supply not only simplifies cable management but allows users to control the LED strip via the motherboards built-in software but more on that later on the rear i/o we get buttons for clearing the CMOS and flashing the BIOS connectors with included antenna for AC Wi-Fi and Bluetooth and DisplayPort and HDMI video outs with increasing USB 3 requirements of upcoming VR headsets it's nice to see no less than 6 USB 3 ports on the formula and there's even 2 USB 3.1 ports in the form of a type a and type C one of the USB 3 port supports key bot 2 a nifty Asus feature that lets you assign macros and functions to your keyboard for things like one press CPU overclocking or booting straight into the BIOS finally a ps2 port and audio jacks with optical s/pdif out whoa that was a huge info dump that I just took on your chest guys but don't hit up red tube just yet because we are finally ready to power this board up and check out its RGB fixon so let's kick it over to vlog Kyle for a lighting demo using the asus or a software hey thanks script cow how's it going guys so right here you can see I've already got a system going with the Maximus 8 formula we've also got a couple RGB LED strips from cable mod that are already wired up now the motherboard comes with an 80 centimeter long adapter so that you can pretty much route the LEDs wherever you want in your case and that's pretty much just wired directly into that RGB header on the board so yeah this is pretty much our setup right now and as you can see we've got a red theme going traditional ROG colors and that actually goes for both the RGB strips as well as the LEDs on the motherboard they are matching because then the Ora software here we have this little box check that says sync LED effects so that's going to sync both of those elements and any color I change this little wheel to boom the whole entire system both of those L it's will will respond accordingly in sync now now you do have the option to unsink it if you want to go ahead and switch things up and have have both of these sections operate independently of each other for example if you want the motherboard to be all pink and stuff you can go over to your header which obviously controls your RGB strips and set that to a different color just click apply there you go you've got a brightness bar over here this bar over here is if you just want the color white and you can adjust the brightness there as well and then beyond that you have some varying effects here so not only if we wanted it a blue but if we wanted to if we wanted the RGB strips to be blue while breathing you could do that go back over to the logo and or they call it logo but it's pretty much all the RGB s on the motherboard we're gonna make this yellow and we're gonna make it strobe baby strobe on that alone so now you've got the blue breathing on the RGB strips and you've got yellow strobing seizure-inducing goodness on the motherboard and as you can see on the motherboard we've got the chipset that lights up as well as the formula logo in the center the branding the middle there and then also we've got a nice strip by the BRM kind of by your rear i/o there and I think they look pretty nice I mean that by far my favorite is the chipset I think the chipset just looks really awesome it's a very even coat of lighting the formula the other two are kind of spotty I mean you can kind of tell where the LEDs are there's like hot spots that you can that are somewhat visible behind that translucent cutout on the ROG armor there and I would have liked to see a little bit more even coat of light as we see on the chipset but overall they look really nice I'm going to go ahead and stop the the strobing before I give myself a seizure we'll do some more gentle breathing and why don't we go ahead and sync these because I think it just looks a little bit nicer when everything is matchy matchy alright so here's here's a quick look at the breathing boom the LEDs turn all the way off and then they they pulse back up you guys already saw strobing unfortunately there's no way to adjust the speed or the rate at which these LEDs breathe or strobe for that or any there's no speed adjustment for any of these effects and it would have been nice to see some of that implemented as well but what can you do maybe a patch update will fix that ACS if you're listening to us hear our plea so you've got color cycle as well and I was a bit disappointed on this one I'm not sure if there's anything else at play here other than the software being relatively new but yeah as you can see the RGB s are the LEDs on the motherboard aren't exactly in sync at all with the LED strips and that's kind of a bummer there are some moments like right here where they're both the same I think that's just kind of out of luck but for the most part they're pretty much missing each other left and right and it's kind of too bad we've also got music effects you guys are familiar with that I'm not going to demo that but you know music plays on your desktop or whatever in Windows and then the lamp the lights dance around and everyone's happy and then lastly we've got CPU temperature here this is also pretty common these days with the beefed-up RGB LED strips or kits we've also seen this in the NZXT hue plus where your your LED color changes based on the temperature of your CPU and I don't believe you can customize the colors of these various temperatures you're pretty much just stuck with green yellow and red and that's pretty much it for aura I mean it's a very simple software it's still fairly new so you know I think it's going to be some time until we see a bit more functionality which would be really nice as long as they can fix that color cycle issue I think this is pretty solid all around as for the LEDs on the motherboard like I said before I do wish those hotspots weren't as noticeable but for the most part they look really nice and the they are super accurate in terms of matching with the RGB LED strips which is really important for something like this so altogether nice job asus and why don't we go ahead and kick it back over to script cow all right thank you blog Kyle for shedding some light on those LEDs okay all right so to sum up the Maximus 8 formula has a lot of things going for it superb storage options water cooling integration and healthy features serving both form and function are all aspects of the board from which enthusiasts will benefit as is the case with ROG boards users can also expects top-notch build quality and a smorgasbord of useful software personally the new stealthy look falls right in line with my taste and I have to commend Asus again for making a color neutral motherboard that gives users free range over the RGB spectrum what's more is that they've managed to hit a Goldilocks sweet spot here where the RGB lighting gives your system a noticeable facelift without stealing the show frankly the only big concern I can see most people having with this board is the price being the first really good RGB motherboard on the market clearly comes with a premium and enthusiasts will have to decide for themselves whether to adopt now or wait for prices to fall one such boards become more mainstream as for those of you who have the means I reckon you'll be making sweet socketed love to this board long before it ever reaches your chassis hashtag sloppy seconds but that is gonna wrap it up for now guys let me know what you think of this thing in the comments below and don't forget to toss me a like on this video if you enjoyed it before you go check the description below for my CPU cooler shirts which are now available in a new sexy material and feel free to bookmark my Amazon affiliate link down there and use it when you buy stuff make your dreams come true as always i'm carol awesomesauce network thank you guys for watching subscribe to the channel if you haven't already and I'll see you all in the next video