ASUS ROG Crosshair VIII Impact

[Black Haru]

The small form factor market has gained a lot of traction over the past decade, and hardware vendors have engaged in an arms race to cram as many features as possible into SFF motherboards. ASUS has landed a decisive blow in that fight with the ROG Crosshair VIII Impact. ALL the features of a full ATX board have been put into a package slightly larger than Mini-ITX.

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[Crackong]

Good Review.

Had this board for a month so far so good.

 

[ZeroFM]

Love briliant idea to put plastic on front/back and increase all components temp in motherboard...

 

[fancucker]

Great review. Any VRM temps with the 3950X? And chipset temps/fan speed. X570 reviews don't regularly address that too.

 

[Daven]

The storage specs on the first page of the article have the wrong PCIe version for M.2 storage. Should be 4.0 not 3.0.

 

[InVasMani]

I think this is part of the reason behind why AMD is outsourcing it's chipset business SFF. They can integrate more of the chipset onto the CPU SoC itself and due away with the motherboard chipset entirely. By doing away with the motherboard chipset they can either shrink the PCB down for these type of SFF PC's or re-utilize and re-purpose the space for a dual socket system. In fact with a dual socket system the parts they've already integrated into it that have those PCIe/M.2 lanes you'd double so it could be easier to integrate them that way initially while offering a means to have a more up-gradable system at the same time.

I mean just imagine these current AM4 CPU's in a dual socket board that didn't cost a whole lot more and at the same time you could mix and match the CPU SoC's for each socket and prioritize which the OS utilizes first that's like the best of both worlds. At the same time could just eliminate the motherboard chipset and reduce the PCB footprint for SFF so it's a win win for AMD if that's what their plan is far as I'm concerned, but it's anyone's guess and speculation what they are thinking. To me AMD outsourcing the chipset because they plan to integrate more of it into the SoC and margins are minimal to begin with and they can use the R&D resources then to integrate more chipset features to the SoC itself of it over time. It's a better use of their time and money to do that is what I'm thinking. It also makes a lot of sense for mobile parts as well that are even more space confined.

 

[Franzen4Real]

Love briliant idea to put plastic on front/back and increase all components temp in motherboard...

Love the brilliant idea to do nothing but look at pictures and come up with a completely wrong, uninformed conclusion.

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

Can you please measure BIOS post time? I have a Crosshair VII board, and it had constant issues with boots taking forever. It was acting like it was doing memory checks on every cold boot, often taking 30+ seconds before getting to the BIOS splash screen, and judging from people's reactions on the ROG forums this was not an isolated problem.

Does the Crosshair VIII have the same issue?

 

[Assimilator]

I want that dual M.2 SODIMM on every motherboard. Doesn't need the crappy LED/fan connectors or the stupid shield, just the card and its slot. No more dicking around in the dark with that tiny M.2 screw while you're trying to mount a drive while the motherboard is in the case, just unplug the SODIMM and you can mount the drive on a flat lighted surface where you can't drop or lose the screw.

 

[fancucker]

I want that dual M.2 SODIMM on every motherboard. Doesn't need the crappy LED/fan connectors or the stupid shield, just the card and its slot. No more dicking around in the dark with that tiny M.2 screw while you're trying to mount a drive while the motherboard is in the case, just unplug the SODIMM and you can mount the drive on a flat lighted surface where you can't drop or lose the screw.

It'd only be appropriate for mATX/DTX/ATX, and it would significantly add to the cost of existing boards. They're very high as they are. They should focus on less plastic shrouding, more efficient and less space-accumulating VRM/chipset cooling, and greater cooler compatibility.

 

[springs113]

Can you please measure BIOS post time? I have a Crosshair VII board, and it had constant issues with boots taking forever. It was acting like it was doing memory checks on every cold boot, often taking 30+ seconds before getting to the BIOS splash screen, and judging from people's reactions on the ROG forums this was not an isolated problem.

Does the Crosshair VIII have the same issue?

Seems to be a one off because my crosshair vii wifi does not do the same thing. How long is your boot time? Did you buy qvl memory?

 

[Super XP]

Very pricey unfortunately.
Will wait for the x670 chipset for the upcoming ZEN 3. My next upgrade.

 

[Athlonite]

Why Asus why did you do this to the SATA ports did you not learn a damn thing from the criticisms of the TUF x470 Plus Gaming when you did this silliness (apparently not from the looks of this abortion)

 

[Jism]

When you guys put a CPU through a overclock test, do you just raise the MP and call it a day? Or do you guys actually explore / exploit the VRM's capability by things such as VRM frequency? Many times with having a higher CPU switching frequency the overall voltage required for a stable overclock can be put lower.

I mean we all know by now all boards have a bare minimum to even hold the 3950x on stock / slight OC settings. Its what AMD wants when you start making a AMD motherboard. No more FX debacles. But such an expensive VRM with currents up to 560A offer way more then just a plain voltage supply.

 

[Crackong]

Can you please measure BIOS post time? I have a Crosshair VII board, and it had constant issues with boots taking forever. It was acting like it was doing memory checks on every cold boot, often taking 30+ seconds before getting to the BIOS splash screen, and judging from people's reactions on the ROG forums this was not an isolated problem.

Does the Crosshair VIII have the same issue?

Currently using Crosshair VIII Impact @ BIOS 1205
Disabled windows hibernation

From Pressing the power button - > Asus BIOS Logo : 10.5 sec

 

[ghazi]

I think this is part of the reason behind why AMD is outsourcing it's chipset business SFF. They can integrate more of the chipset onto the CPU SoC itself and due away with the motherboard chipset entirely. By doing away with the motherboard chipset they can either shrink the PCB down for these type of SFF PC's or re-utilize and re-purpose the space for a dual socket system. In fact with a dual socket system the parts they've already integrated into it that have those PCIe/M.2 lanes you'd double so it could be easier to integrate them that way initially while offering a means to have a more up-gradable system at the same time.

I mean just imagine these current AM4 CPU's in a dual socket board that didn't cost a whole lot more and at the same time you could mix and match the CPU SoC's for each socket and prioritize which the OS utilizes first that's like the best of both worlds. At the same time could just eliminate the motherboard chipset and reduce the PCB footprint for SFF so it's a win win for AMD if that's what their plan is far as I'm concerned, but it's anyone's guess and speculation what they are thinking. To me AMD outsourcing the chipset because they plan to integrate more of it into the SoC and margins are minimal to begin with and they can use the R&D resources then to integrate more chipset features to the SoC itself of it over time. It's a better use of their time and money to do that is what I'm thinking. It also makes a lot of sense for mobile parts as well that are even more space confined.

AMD actually had already planned to do this. Remember X300 and A300 that got announced as SFF options for first-gen Zen but were never released? Those weren't chipsets, those were chipset-less platforms for Ryzen relying purely on the SoC.

It seems the motherboard manufacturers weren't too happy about that proposition. Basically, the more things are taken off of the motherboard (and that trend has been continuing for decades now), the less important and complex the motherboard is, and the less money the manufacturer can charge for it.

 

[melvz90]

This board looks interesting. SFF/ITX boards for X570 is still very limited. I see it's a mini-DTX. Can anybody suggest any case that is specific to mini-dtx? Or can this just slide into any case that can take mini-itx?

 

[thekaidis]

This board looks interesting. SFF/ITX boards for X570 is still very limited. I see it's a mini-DTX. Can anybody suggest any case that is specific to mini-dtx? Or can this just slide into any case that can take mini-itx?

mDTX is just mITX with 2 expansion slot positions. So if a case can fit an ITX board with a dual-slot GPU, it will fit a mini DTX board.

 

[springs113]

This board looks interesting. SFF/ITX boards for X570 is still very limited. I see it's a mini-DTX. Can anybody suggest any case that is specific to mini-dtx? Or can this just slide into any case that can take mini-itx?

Since another poster answered part of your question, I'll be a little more specific. Ncase m1 v6, h210, lian li tu150, q37 and theIn Win A1 are a few of the sff cases able to accommodate this board.

 

[melvz90]

Since another poster answered part of your question, I'll be a little more specific. Ncase m1 v6, h210, lian li tu150, q37 and theIn Win A1 are a few of the sff cases able to accommodate this board.

thank you.

 

[theGryphon]

How tall is that SODIMM card, from the motherboard surface?