The ASUS ROG Crosshair VIII Impact: A Sharp $430 Impulse on X570
by Gavin Bonshor on October 25, 2019 11:30 AM ESTDeep Impact
The ASUS ROG Crosshair VIII Impact costs $430. There's no getting away from it - this is by far the most expensive small form factor motherboard at present on the X570 chipset. There ASUS ROG Crosshair VIII Impact also throws up an interesting question for SFF systems, with its slightly larger mini-DTX form factor. The Impact is effectively in a class of its own at the price point and with the unique DTX form factor. That being said, while the primary target market of the Impact is enthusiasts looking to build a smaller form factor, the truth is that the mini-DTX size does cancel out any mini-ITX chassis designs, causing the user to look at micro-ATX cases.
Its core feature set comes also comes from its use of the SO-DIMM.2 slot which allows users to add two PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 drives in with both NVMe and SATA support included. Outside of this is four SATA slots, with two straight-angled, and two right-angled ports with RAID 0, 1, and 10 support out of the box. The provided networking support of Intel's I211-AT Gigabit Ethernet controller raises questions as to why a model costing $430 is still reliant on a single gigabit Ethernet port, but the inclusion of an Intel AX200 Wi-Fi 6 wireless interface which adds BT 5.0 connectivity does offer some credence to the price tag.
Another interesting feature is how the SupremeFX S1220 HD audio codec and assisting ESS ES9023P DAC has been implemented to save even more space on the ROG Crosshair VIII Impact; through an M.2 B-key slot located just below the full-length PCIe 4.0 x16 slot. The S1220 HD codec itself comes with EMI shielding and plenty of gold Japanese audio capacitors, and as from most onboard audio solutions, is well isolated from the rest of the board's componentry. This is covered by a ROG themed black metal fascia which fits in with the rest of the Impact's neutrally black color scheme.
The overall design of the ROG Crosshair VIII Impact is clean, concise and for what it has in integrated RGB along the right-hand side of the board, it looks good and not overpowering. Users can expand on this with two ARGB connectors, one on the PCB itself and one on the SO-DIMM.2 add-on card. The SO-DIMM.2 also adds two 4-pin fan headers in addition to the three 4-pin headers located on the board; one for a CPU fan, one for a water pump, and another designated as a chassis fan header. This further adds to the Impact as both a premium model and one that's suitable for water cooling.
Looking at connectivity, on the rear panel is plenty of USB support which consists of five USB 3.1 G2 Type-A, one USB 3.1 G2 Type-C, and two USB 3.1 G1 Type-A ports. Unlike most conventional models, ASUS includes its LED Debugger on the rear panel and for good measure, also include a reset switch, a clear CMOS button, and a USB BIOS Flashback button. There are just three 3.5 mm audio jacks on the rear panel so users looking to use surround sound or speaker setups with more than three outputs will need to use the front panel audio header also featured on the M.2 B-key audio card; there's also a single S/PDIF optical output. The ASUS ROG Crosshair VIII Impact doesn't feature any video outputs but for a model to this standard and caliber, it would be expected that users will use a discrete graphics card.
The ASP1405I 8-phase PWM controller on the ASUS ROG Crosshair VIII Impact
The ASUS ROG Crosshair VIII Impact also performs very competitively with other X570 models on testing, with fast non-UEFI POST times, consistent power consumption and good computational performance. Couple that in with the impressive power delivery thermal performance which is underpinned by the 30 mm cooling fan directly over the heatsink is something all premium models should consider implementing. ASUS takes this further with a backplate that has a heatpipe in which is useful as the 2-phase SoC section is mounted on the rear of the board. The 8-phase CPU power delivery is teamed and performs very well in our overclocking testing with good VDroop for better efficiency, and has plenty of support for overclockers looking to take Ryzen 3000 under more extreme cooling methods such as LN2 with its own LN2 mode. At default settings, ASUS is known for its solid out of the box optimizations, but for overclocking, the Impact is the Dirty Harry of the small form factor X570 offerings.
It's hard to compare a $430 model such as the ASUS ROG Crosshair VIII Impact to other models which it dwarves in price. The next best model in terms of size is the ASRock X570 Phantom Gaming-ITX/TB3 ($240) which is mini-ITX and has Thunderbolt 3 support. While the ASUS ROG Crosshair VIII Impact is a solid board and looks to provide a very rigid platform to build on, the price really does take it out of the market for all but the extreme systems.
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evernessince - Saturday, October 26, 2019 - link
It's the same people complaining on every article about the same issue, despite the fact that they've been told time and time again that these fans run at low RPM or off completely when you are not pushing the IO heavily. For most people, they are inaudible 100% of the time. These people want to spin their narrative, not try to understand what people are telling themHardwareDufus - Friday, October 25, 2019 - link
I won't say that I'm disappointed. I like Zen2.... but I will do just one more cycle of waiting.... I want to see the Zen3 successor to the Ryzen 9-3950X... and the RDNA 2 successor to the Radeon RX 5700 XT. That's all probably 12-15 months away, but that's just about right. I too am on an I7-3770k (longest lasting CPU I have ever had as well). This will be the last machine I build of my professional working career (If I've gotten 7+ years out of my I7-3770k, I'm sure I'll get 5 years out of the Zen3 16core CPU).hmmm, my trusty SilverStone SG055BB is mini-ITX / mini-DTX compatible (I own two of them). However, I'd pay a max of $300usd for a board like this (even though admittedly it's just about the perfect board... optical audio out, wifi and 2 M2 slots for storage... I ALWAYS have two harddrives).
We will see if a successor to this board is available in 12-15 months when I make the Ryzen Zen3 & Radeon RDNA-2 jump.
I'll be fine if only PCI4 is supported at that point.... I won't hold off for PCI5 to be implemented.
Will be interesting to see if we start seeing 4TB M.2 storage devices at that point as well... and if 32GB Dimms at good speed will be more affordable. Yeah.. Looking at 16 Cores @ 4Ghz+, 2X32GB for 64GB of Ram, 2X4TB for 8TB of storage to drive 2 32" 4K monitors. Will be a nice rig for the sunset years of my IT career...
alufan - Saturday, October 26, 2019 - link
honestly I do not understand folks who say this you have a CPU that is in modern terms slow and a system thats the same AMD comes along with a really disruptive product that is leagues ahead of what you have and in its third generation yet still you want to wait !What the heck exactly do they need to do to get your buy in, if AMD didnt exist or bring Zen to the party intel would happily keep chugging out its same CPUs for the next 10 years, support the company thats brought the fight to them!
HardwareDufus - Sunday, October 27, 2019 - link
Well, I will build the new system with cash on hand... So I may have misrepresented why I will sit out...... It's just that in my budget at end of 2020/2021 will make room for my computer. By then it will be Ryzen Zen 3 Radeon RDNA-2 and I will be curious to see what they offer... That's all. If their release is stalled significantly... then I 12 months from now I will buy current gen Ryzen Zen 2 Radeon RDNA....and would be equally delighted to do so...HardwareDufus - Sunday, October 27, 2019 - link
But perhaps in that time.... we will see a X570 variant that won't require a fan.... again, won't be a show stopper, as the CPU and Video cards will have fans aplenty anyway.....evernessince - Saturday, October 26, 2019 - link
And yet all X570 motherboards either turn off the fan during low load or run at low RPM, making then inaudible.PeachNCream - Sunday, October 27, 2019 - link
Noise isn't the concern. Fan failure is what bothers the OP as indicated by noting fans are a regression in the movement toward fewer moving parts (which can suffer from mechanical failure). While noise might be a concern, broken little fans that are a PIA to replace are what have peoples' panties in a twist right now and we haven't seen any X570 motherboards operating long enough to get a good understanding of whether or not fan failures are going to be a problem or if, as you implied, they are generally not running to begin with (which begs the question why the motherboard manufacturers are adding them in the first place instead of using a more effective passive heatsink).Oliseo - Sunday, October 27, 2019 - link
But you're not interested in anything but laptops, I don't get why you're arguing with people about something you no longer care about.Just like arguing I suppose.
RavenRampkin - Sunday, October 27, 2019 - link
May I kindly take Peach's initiative? xDNot interested in laptops. Have one, it's fine. The current pricing situation is meh. 6/12 ultrabook and 8/16 laptop parts are crazy expensive. Graphics are expensive (Turing), boring (Turing GTX) or both (Radeon, sadly. Power hogs or underperformers, or both). Zen is a skillful fighter for new users but nothing of particular interest over a good ol' 4700MQ (minus the Vega... got a dGPU anyway)...
As for the fans, sorry bud. If the interested customer has to find ways in which a hackjob (just sry, this IS a hackjob... it's not 2005 anymore) doesn't svck (oh the fans are low RPM, oh they're not that short-lived, oh there's passive mode at 0.1% load) and is actually *not that bad*, then it's not really a good hackjob. The need for this dayum fan in the first place screams a littley oopsie from ASMedia, or a design less efficient than usual on AMD's side. OK higher demands than for 300 and 400 series, then why does Shintel get away without le fans? (Pls correct if wrong.) Also, you can still do it passive, funnily enough. Why should it be a blessing and not a default option?
Case in point right above (or below?) me. Adaptation 100. Spare me some lube guys, been shilling for AyyMD, AsRock, Powercolor and Seasonic long enough :P want to try out some other companies
TL;DR there's no advantage nor purpose in reinventing the sleeve bearing (or dual ball, depends) wheel.
AshlayW - Monday, October 28, 2019 - link
PCI express 4.0 has significantly higher power requirements and thus heat output. X570 chipset is a repurposed Matisse IOD. Why you people complain about the chipset fan is beyond me, always gotta complain about something I guess. It's completely bloody inaudible on my X570M pro 4, and also completely unnecessary for all but the most intense I/o on both gen4 m.2 and the GPU.Stop complaining.