ASUS mastered the art of using daughterboards to effectively increase the board area of its mini-ITX motherboards, to cram in more features, beginning with its pioneering VRM board, which added 8- to 10-phase CPU VRM. The company's latest such product builds heavily on this idea. The Maximus VII Impact, based on Intel's new Z97 Express chipset, and supporting socket LGA1150 processors, features as many as five daughterboards.

It begins with one that holds the board's mighty 8-phase CPU VRM; one called ImpactControl II, which features onboard power/reset, clear CMOS, and ROG Connect buttons, apart from POST LEDs, which show out from the rear I/O panel; one called the Impact CoolHub, which gives out two 4-pin PWM fan headers, with an LN2 mode toggle; the mPCIe Combo IV board, which features an mPCIe x1 slot on one side (which is populated with the board's 802.11 ac WLAN card), and an M.2 slot with PCIe 2.0 x4 link layer wiring on the other; and the SupremeFX Impact II, which is the audio board featuring an EMI-shielded 110 dBA SNR CODEC, audio-grade capacitors, a headphones amp, and inherent ground-layer isolation.The board draws power from a combination of 24-pin ATX and 8-pin EPS power connectors. The LGA1150 CPU socket is wired to two DDR3 DIMM slots, and a PCI-Express 3.0 x16. Storage connectivity, apart from the M.2 x4, includes four SATA 6 Gb/s port. Network connectivity, apart from the 802.11 ac WLAN, is care of a gigabit Ethernet connection, handled by an Intel-made controller. Display outputs include HDMI and DisplayPort. Six USB 3.0 ports, and a number of USB 2.0/1.1 ports make up the rest of it.