Asus Maximus VII Impact Review

Performance Analysis

The Maximus VII Impact put in some very solid numbers in our benchmarks at stock speed, and wasn't far from the top spot overall in the Media Benchmarks with its score of 2,469 sitting mid-way in a very tight pack. Funnily enough, its predecessor, which we've included for reference purposes, still holds the top spot with a score of 2,521 compared to the new Impact's score of 2,469.


However, it posted the fastest results we've seen in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, being a couple of frames per second ahead of the usual 114fps minimum frame rate - something we were unable to iron out with repeated testing. It also matched the highest score in the Shogun 2: Total War CPU Test. Overclocking saw a marked improvement in the Media Benchmarks and its score of 2,932 overall was enough for 4th place out of the 15 boards we've included in the graph. It maintained its lead in The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim too.


Audio performance was excellent, with only Gigabyte's GA-Z97N-Gaming 5 and Asus's own Maximus VII Formula able to give it a run for its money in the Dynamic Range and Noise Level tests. There was nothing bad to report in the storage tests either, where the Impact posted the fastest read speed on test, albeit only by 2MB/sec. With the extra voltage and loadline calibration needed to hit 4.8GHz, power consumption was a higher than the Asus Z97i-Plus for example, both at idle and load, but given all the extra paraphernalia on-board, its stock speed results were fairly tame.

Conclusion

The Maximus VII Impact is in very different territory to both the ATX ROG boards (Hero and Ranger) and the micro-ATX Gene for that matter. Its price tag means that for would be mini-ITX owners, it needs some careful consideration given the excellent and much cheaper alternatives around, including Asus's own Z97i-Plus. In raw value terms, the latter is hard to beat, especially as it's just as capable of overclocking any Haswell-based CPU to the max and sitting there all day - if that's all you want of course. The Impact, though, is undoubtedly the most lust-worthy board in its class and for this reason alone we expect plenty to be snapped up.

There are reasons apart from showing off to consider investing in an Impact though. For starters, it has more fan headers than most other mini-ITX boards. It also has a decent sound card that will likely mean you don't have to invest in an external one. It offers full-size M.2 support too - something the GA-Z97N-Gaming 5 does not and of course there are plenty of exotic waterblocks being specially made for it as well. In our minds, coupled with the extra ROG-centric software features and sheer wow-factor of unboxing and building a PC with the Impact, especially a water-cooled one, these perks go a long way to justifying the extra premium of owning this fantastic motherboard.