While we may already have known almost all the technical specifications of Asus' ROG Maximus VI Impact board, the only thing that it did for most of us in the past few months was get us annoyed at the sad reality that the board wasn't released yet. Fortunately, it appears that the board has now hit retail channels!
The Maximus VI Impact is a Mini-ITX motherboard that carries the LGA1150 socket and the Z87 chipset. The CPU is powered through an 8+2 phase VRM design that protrudes the main motherboard in its own little PCB, which in turn gets its power through an 8-pin EPS connector. The rest of the board is powered through a 24-pin ATX connector.
The motherboard's interior connectivity includes two DDR3 memory slots, a single PCIe x16 3.0 slot, four SATA3 slots, front USB 3.0 port through a header, and audio connection headers. External I/O connectivity is achieved by a DisplayPort, an HDMI port, four USB 2.0 ports, another four USB 3.0 ports, an optical SPDIF port, Gbit Ethernet, and three analog 3.5 mm jacks. Furthermore, the rear features POST diagnostic readouts and CMOS reset and restore switches. This has been placed on the rear I/O due to space constraints on the motherboard surface itself.
The sound board on the motherboard is one of the most impressive bits, though. The motherboard features its own daughterboard sound card, which carries an audiophile grade headphone amp, a 120 dB signal-to-noise ratio, a shield over the main audio core, as well as ELNA audio caps. The sound card is also placed above the PCIe x16 slot, meaning that you can still use a graphics card next to it without sacrificing your sound card. The motherboard also features an mPCIe combo adapter, which takes care of both 802.11ac WiFi and Bluetooth 4.0, and also features an M.2 slot.
Asus' ROG Maximus VI Impact motherboard is still difficult to find through US retail channels, though at the time of writing it is available through various European channels for prices just over €200. Realistically, we should be able to expect the board to hit US retail channels within a couple of weeks, if not days.
