TheOverclocker Issue 36 | Page 26

The Extreme board supports 3x Type A ports and a single Type-C port. How useful this is remains to be seen as one would imagine an additional Type-C port would serve a better purpose. Alas, it is what it is and perhaps at some point there may be a converter that end users can buy to change one type to the other. If you re-call, some X99 motherboards from ASUS featured an M.2 to U.2 converter. This time, instead of an add-in card, this U.2 port is built right on to the motherboard and you need not sacrifice your M.2 slots to use it. Obviously it uses PCI-Express lanes and as you can imagine you will lose some SATA port connectivity. However, it should not interfere with the M.2 slot at all. Oddly enough, there’s only one such slot which is unlike all the other high end boards that seem to be competing for how many of these can be placed on a board. Again, this should not be an issue for 26 The OverClocker Issue 36 | 2015 most users, but those who are looking at setting up M.2 based RAID arrays, may need to seek out the DELUXE board rather. Given that you receive a motherboard with more full length PCI-Express slots. You would be forgiven for thinking this has 4-way SLI support, but it does not. You may run 4-way CrossfireX of course, but SLI is a no because there is no switching chip that would allow all the cards in the system to operate at a minimum of x8 lanes. Again, not a big deal as if you really want to run 4-way SLI you should consider the X99 platform. As with all high end Maximus motherboards, ASUS has included the ROG Panel. This is largely unchanged from what you’re familiar with and if you have one already, you can use it on this board, at worst only needing a firmware update to support the MAXIMUS VIII Extreme. Previously I covered what this panel does in the Rampage V Extreme review so I’ll not repeat it again, suffice to say that this panel is probably worth $100 by itself given all that it allows you to do. The addition of the OC panel does go a long way into justifying the price premium over the Hero board. As we are primarily concerned with the overclocking aspect of the board. It is safe to state that the EXTREME does everything the GENE and HERO board can at the very least. In this particular review, it proved difficult to truly push the CPU to the limit, not because of the motherboard, but because after several failed attempts at de-lidding the CPUs (this was prior to der8auer’s De-Lid Die mate) it became uneconomical to invest further into this endeavor. Suffice to say, with the IHS kept as is from the retail chip. The Maximus VIII Extreme dialed in a healthy 5.6 ~ 5.7GHz. Perhaps higher numbers were possible, but without de-lidding the CPU,