Asus Skylake Z170 Motherboards: Maximus VIII Gene vs. Z170-A
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Lawrence Lee
- SPCR Reviewer
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- Joined: Fri Mar 04, 2005 9:07 pm
- Location: Vancouver
Re: Asus Skylake Z170 Motherboards: Maximus VIII Gene vs. Z1
Thanks for the review. I have a couple of UEFI questions 
- There was some FUD in the forums around the Z170-A's control of the chassis fans (that perhaps Asus reverted to DC only for their lower priced Z170 boards). Did you have a chance to control a PWM fan in one of these connectors?
- The fan hysteresis looks interesting. What's the time range available and is it available for both PWM and DC modes?
- Did you have a chance to see how well the fan characterization testing works vs it's s/w counterpart?
- There was some FUD in the forums around the Z170-A's control of the chassis fans (that perhaps Asus reverted to DC only for their lower priced Z170 boards). Did you have a chance to control a PWM fan in one of these connectors?
- The fan hysteresis looks interesting. What's the time range available and is it available for both PWM and DC modes?
- Did you have a chance to see how well the fan characterization testing works vs it's s/w counterpart?
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quest_for_silence
- Posts: 5275
- Joined: Wed Jun 13, 2007 10:12 am
- Location: ITALY
Re: Asus Skylake Z170 Motherboards: Maximus VIII Gene vs. Z1
I would add (to your questions) that an SPCR co-forumer reported ASUS Z170 De Luxe unable to boot with a fanless cooler: may Lawrence kindly check this oddity with both the Gene VIII and Z170-A?CA_Steve wrote:Thanks for the review. I have a couple of UEFI questions
- There was some FUD in the forums around the Z170-A's control of the chassis fans (that perhaps Asus reverted to DC only for their lower priced Z170 boards). Did you have a chance to control a PWM fan in one of these connectors?
BTW, thanks a lot for another great review, mr. Lee !!!
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chienpourri
- Posts: 63
- Joined: Mon Jul 10, 2006 10:37 am
Re: Asus Skylake Z170 Motherboards: Maximus VIII Gene vs. Z1
Thanks for the review! I own the Z170-A with a 6600K. If anyone is wondering, the white plastic shroud is very easily removed (3 screws on the back) and I did so for extra cooling.
So far the board has been good, the one thing I didn't notice until too late is that by default it will boot in Legacy mode instead of UEFI... I converted my Windows 10 installation after the fact using some instructions I found and it worked well. You need to set the CSM option to "Auto" in the bios, by default it is set to "Enable".
Also I am able to control 5 headers with either PWM or DC; however there are 2 more fan header that do NOT support control at all and are stuck at full speed: CPU_OPT and WTR_PUMP connector so keep that in mind if you wish to use them.
I think this board is at a very sweet spot for price vs features, I paid CAD 205$ for it and it holds it's value very well. Also the legacy PCI slot was needed for my X-Fi Prelude 7.1 so I'm very glad this board has one, altough it's placement is not the best (GPU in 1st slot is VERY close to it).
Stock BIOS was 0404 from July (does not even show up on Asus website), yesterday I updated successfully to 1003 (will take a good 5 minutes and 3-4 reboots, just let it go). This is needed if ANY of your games uses some form of DRM, for example I was unable to play the Origin version of Burnout Paradise and found out it was related to a Skylake release bug that is fixed with a BIOS update.
I have yet to OC at all, I simply set the XMP for the 2800 RAM and that was it.
So far the board has been good, the one thing I didn't notice until too late is that by default it will boot in Legacy mode instead of UEFI... I converted my Windows 10 installation after the fact using some instructions I found and it worked well. You need to set the CSM option to "Auto" in the bios, by default it is set to "Enable".
Also I am able to control 5 headers with either PWM or DC; however there are 2 more fan header that do NOT support control at all and are stuck at full speed: CPU_OPT and WTR_PUMP connector so keep that in mind if you wish to use them.
I think this board is at a very sweet spot for price vs features, I paid CAD 205$ for it and it holds it's value very well. Also the legacy PCI slot was needed for my X-Fi Prelude 7.1 so I'm very glad this board has one, altough it's placement is not the best (GPU in 1st slot is VERY close to it).
Stock BIOS was 0404 from July (does not even show up on Asus website), yesterday I updated successfully to 1003 (will take a good 5 minutes and 3-4 reboots, just let it go). This is needed if ANY of your games uses some form of DRM, for example I was unable to play the Origin version of Burnout Paradise and found out it was related to a Skylake release bug that is fixed with a BIOS update.
I have yet to OC at all, I simply set the XMP for the 2800 RAM and that was it.
Re: Asus Skylake Z170 Motherboards: Maximus VIII Gene vs. Z1
Quad-SLI and Quad CrossFireX are the implementations that are 2 dual GPU cards (e.g. Titan Z and Radeon R9 295X2) SLIed/CrossFired together. 4 GPUs on 2 add-in boards in 2 PCIe slots. 4 GPUs on 4 add-in boards is denoted as 4-way SLI/CrossFireX. Technically, the specifications are correct.Another noteworthy point is an apparent error in the specifications as both boards are listed as being Quad-SLI/CrossFireX compatible which is impossible based on the number/configuration of the given PCI-E slots.
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Lawrence Lee
- SPCR Reviewer
- Posts: 1115
- Joined: Fri Mar 04, 2005 9:07 pm
- Location: Vancouver
Re: Asus Skylake Z170 Motherboards: Maximus VIII Gene vs. Z1
I set one chassis fan header to PWM in the BIOS, fan-tuned it, and it appeared to be working in that Fan Xpert wouldn't allow me to shut it off which is indicative of PWM control. I assume it works for all the other chassis fan headers.CA_Steve wrote:- There was some FUD in the forums around the Z170-A's control of the chassis fans (that perhaps Asus reverted to DC only for their lower priced Z170 boards). Did you have a chance to control a PWM fan in one of these connectors?
0~25 seconds for CPU fan. 0~204 seconds for chassis fans. 10 different steps. See manual for specifics.CA_Steve wrote:The fan hysteresis looks interesting. What's the time range available and is it available for both PWM and DC modes?
Unfortunately, no.CA_Steve wrote:Did you have a chance to see how well the fan characterization testing works vs it's s/w counterpart?
Re: Asus Skylake Z170 Motherboards: Maximus VIII Gene vs. Z1
Sorry for necroing this old review, even though it is new for me. Hope you can bear with me in my first post (not first read hehe) in this forum.
I am looking to replace my current Rampage IV Formula with i7-3820 for a more efficient platform. I have come to love the ROG lineup for its stability, quality and settings revolving around fan profile customization and lots more. I have also come to be very green. The consistency in power consumption from the motherboards reviewed among different review sites leaves much to be desired, for understandable reasons of course.
The review from OCAHOLIC showing the Maximus VIII gene as having a very low CPU load power consumption. While your review shows lower idle but higher load.
http://www.ocaholic.ch/modules/smartsec ... 73&page=21
Full list of comparisons from OCAHOLIC http://www.ocaholic.ch/modules/smartsec ... 71&page=21
I listened to this podcast http://feeds.feedburner.com/ASUS-StraightEdge which brought up some questions from i.e. CA_Steve.
In the podcast I heard that the default "CPU Power Phase" setting of the ROG line up of motherboards are set to a more aggressive setting, in combination with the parts choosen already being a little more robust, rather than efficient. This got me thinking more about the variance in power consumption between different reviews and which settings is being applied or not upon the review.
With regards to settings impacting power consumption in both idle and load E.G. CPU Power Phase, C-states, Speedstep, XMP profile, Windows Power Plan, 110AC/220AC, Power Supply, Multicore Enhancement, not to mention the application used to put the load on the system, it is next to impossible to distuingish the truth to which motherboard is more efficient than the other.
Thank you for taking your time and hoping for a wise speculation about the power consumption
System IDLE/LOAD M8G
SPCR 33/124 (Seasonic SS400-ET)
OCAHOLIC 44/108 (Seasonic Platinum 520w Fanless)
Bit-tech 53/113 (Corsair AX860i)
Back2gaming 78/155 (Corsair AX860i)
I am looking to replace my current Rampage IV Formula with i7-3820 for a more efficient platform. I have come to love the ROG lineup for its stability, quality and settings revolving around fan profile customization and lots more. I have also come to be very green. The consistency in power consumption from the motherboards reviewed among different review sites leaves much to be desired, for understandable reasons of course.
The review from OCAHOLIC showing the Maximus VIII gene as having a very low CPU load power consumption. While your review shows lower idle but higher load.
http://www.ocaholic.ch/modules/smartsec ... 73&page=21
Full list of comparisons from OCAHOLIC http://www.ocaholic.ch/modules/smartsec ... 71&page=21
I listened to this podcast http://feeds.feedburner.com/ASUS-StraightEdge which brought up some questions from i.e. CA_Steve.
In the podcast I heard that the default "CPU Power Phase" setting of the ROG line up of motherboards are set to a more aggressive setting, in combination with the parts choosen already being a little more robust, rather than efficient. This got me thinking more about the variance in power consumption between different reviews and which settings is being applied or not upon the review.
With regards to settings impacting power consumption in both idle and load E.G. CPU Power Phase, C-states, Speedstep, XMP profile, Windows Power Plan, 110AC/220AC, Power Supply, Multicore Enhancement, not to mention the application used to put the load on the system, it is next to impossible to distuingish the truth to which motherboard is more efficient than the other.
Thank you for taking your time and hoping for a wise speculation about the power consumption
System IDLE/LOAD M8G
SPCR 33/124 (Seasonic SS400-ET)
OCAHOLIC 44/108 (Seasonic Platinum 520w Fanless)
Bit-tech 53/113 (Corsair AX860i)
Back2gaming 78/155 (Corsair AX860i)
Re: Asus Skylake Z170 Motherboards: Maximus VIII Gene vs. Z1
Welcome to SPCR.
Yeah, it's a PITA trying to sort out the facts. Some reviewers test methodologies are more strict/repeatable than others. Unless they spell it out, you don't know if the dang mobo is set for stock with the idle and load voltages. There has been more than one SPCR community member posting about high cpu temps and it turned out the motherboard was applying some overvoltage straight from the factory. And, there's the BIOS lottery...when did reviewer A look at a board compared to reviewer B? Was the former based on an intro release and the latter done 6 months later using BIOS/drivers rev 5? It's a mess.
Some generic thoughts:
- A mobo that's targeted for extreme overclocking (with lots and lots of power phases) will tend to be less efficent at idle and more efficient at load than a cheaper board with far fewer phases.
- A mobo with all the bells and whistles will use more power at idle and load than a vanilla board. You can always go into the device manager and turn unused features off...
Yeah, it's a PITA trying to sort out the facts. Some reviewers test methodologies are more strict/repeatable than others. Unless they spell it out, you don't know if the dang mobo is set for stock with the idle and load voltages. There has been more than one SPCR community member posting about high cpu temps and it turned out the motherboard was applying some overvoltage straight from the factory. And, there's the BIOS lottery...when did reviewer A look at a board compared to reviewer B? Was the former based on an intro release and the latter done 6 months later using BIOS/drivers rev 5? It's a mess.
Some generic thoughts:
- A mobo that's targeted for extreme overclocking (with lots and lots of power phases) will tend to be less efficent at idle and more efficient at load than a cheaper board with far fewer phases.
- A mobo with all the bells and whistles will use more power at idle and load than a vanilla board. You can always go into the device manager and turn unused features off...
Re: Asus Skylake Z170 Motherboards: Maximus VIII Gene vs. Z1
Or better still, do it in the BIOS. This may also yield POST time improvements.CA_Steve wrote:You can always go into the device manager and turn unused features off...
Re: Asus Skylake Z170 Motherboards: Maximus VIII Gene vs. Z1
This is a good rule of thumb, indeed. I turn off all lighting, controllers, usb ports etc that I do not use in the UEFI including CPU undervoltage. Most demanding load I put on the system is games and they tend to be stable with quite a substantial drop in vCORE. I can overclock the 3820 to 4.3 with an offset voltage of minus -0,06 volt and be perfectly stable in games and desktop. Applying the same practices to a new platform might net some good reduction on top of what the reviews say.CA_Steve wrote:Welcome to SPCR.
Some generic thoughts:
- A mobo that's targeted for extreme overclocking (with lots and lots of power phases) will tend to be less efficent at idle and more efficient at load than a cheaper board with far fewer phases.
- A mobo with all the bells and whistles will use more power at idle and load than a vanilla board. You can always go into the device manager and turn unused features off...
Currently able to get my system to run at best 70w idle and 200w with OCCT 4.4.2. During witcher 3 or Fallout 4 this peaks at max 300w. (MSI GTX970 4G)
In comparison to my current Rampage IV Formula x79 I was hoping that the smaller form factor, mainstream platform with 95w cpu TDP, skylake efficiency and my vcore and controller disabling practices would net a smaller power consumption overall. Maybe the difference wont be as great as I am hoping.