ASUS Republic of Gamers (ROG) today announced that ROG Crosshair VIII Impact, the powerhouse compact gaming motherboard, is now available in the Philippines. It made two new records during its initial release — breaking through the 6 GHz barrier for both CPU and memory frequencies.

Power design that bucks the trend

HCC processors need reliable power delivery, minimal latency and accurate timing. Crosshair VIII Impact feature the latest VRM architecture with teamed Infineon TDA21472 power stages that rapidly swing current, while maintaining exemplary thermal performance. Sitting at the top of their lineup, the Infineon TDA21472 power stage features a low RDS_ON to reduce switching and conduction losses, improving overall thermal headroom. Both motherboards feature an 8+2 power-stage design, able to handle up to 70 amps.

Active VRM and chipset combo heatsink

In an SFF build with an HCC processor at its heart, reliable, high-efficiency cooling is essential to prevent performance-sapping throttling. Both Crosshair VIII Impact feature beefy heatsinks, plus two custom Delta Superflo fans rated to last more than 60,000 hours — amounting to very many years of continuous real-world use. Though featuring different designs to reflect and accommodate the different layouts of the two motherboards, both are specifically configured to cool the VRM and chipset efficiently and consistently.

ROG Crosshair VIII Impact: Mini powerhouse packing mighty ATX-size payloads

As the first Impact in the longstanding ROG Crosshair series, Crosshair VIII Impact is a compact powerhouse based on the Mini-DTX form factor that maintains compatibility with most Mini-ITX cases. Being marginally taller than Mini-ITX allows Impact to exploit this extra headroom, allowing ROG engineers to dedicate more space to the VRM and cooling design.

Crosshair VIII Impact features an array of 8+2 strategically paired TDA21472 power stages, each rated to handle 70 amps. To keep it cool, the motherboard includes a unique, single-body, actively cooled VRM and chipset-heatsink combo, with dual custom Delta Superflo fans. A high-efficiency copper heatpipe channels heat away from the VRM to a full-size aluminum backplate, spreading heat quickly and evenly, compensating for limited airflow in smaller chassis. Impact also includes two dedicated headers for radiator fans, along with headers for monitoring coolant flow and temperature.

While the large VRM and cooling array eat up a lot of real estate, Impact stacks up storage, audio and control features onto innovative vertical daughter boards, leaving us spare room onboard to add more connectivity and engineer features normally found on ATX boards into a small-form-factor (SFF) footprint.

For superior storage speed, Crosshair VIII Impact comes with a bundled expansion card with heatsink that allows two M.2 drives to be connected via a SO-DIMM interface and helps control SSD thermals for maximum performance.

Crosshair VIII Impact also benefits from OptiMem III, with proprietary memory-trace layout tweaks that improve signal integrity and mitigate noise — allowing memory kits to run at lower latencies, reduced voltages, and operate at higher frequencies.

For high-quality audio, Crosshair VII Impact comes with SupremeFX and an ESS ES9023P DAC on an interference-reducing dedicated card, plus ROG Sonic Studio III for immersive surround sound. The motherboard also offers many DIY-friendly features, including a pre-mounted I/O shield, BIOS Flashback and angled SATA connectors.

As a final flourish, Crosshair VIII Impact even includes a dedicated header for a USB 3.2 Gen 2 front-panel connectors — offering users easy access to future-proof USB Type-C™ (USB-C™) connectivity and the joy of up to 10Gbps transfer speeds.

The power of a full-fledged ATX motherboard in smaller package

Following the release of the new AMD Ryzen 9 3950X processor the ASUS overclocking team was able push the clock speed to an astonishing 6,003 MHz (6 GHz), as measured by CPU-Z. The base clock speed of the Ryzen 9 3950X CPU is 3.5 GHz, with a maximum boosted clock speed of 4.7 GHz, underscoring the magnitude of Crosshair VIII Impact’s achievement. Incredible speeds were also achieved, breaking the Geekbench 3 (Multi-Core Score) world record for a 16-core processor. The Geekbench 3 results can be viewed at https://hwbot.org/benchmark/geekbench3_-_multi_core.

Exclusive for early adopters: First 10 gets ROG merchandise

To celebrate the arrival of the high-performance enthusiast motherboard, ROG will reward the first 10 who will purchase and submit their details a ROG swag pack, containing a ROG drawstring bag, ROG writing notebook, ROG passport holder, and ROG lanyard. Offer will las last until February 1, 2020. Customers who have purchased locally can submit their details here: https://ph.rog.gg/totalimpact.

AVAILABILITY & PRICING

ASUS ROG Crosshair VIII Impact is available in the Philippines with an SRP of Php23,320. This board initially available in the following stores: ROG Concept Stores, Complink, Davao Futurebright Enterprises, IT World – Lazada, JDM Techno Computer Center, PC Hub, PC Quickbuys, Strategic Technologies, Tech2027 – Lazada, and Thinking Tools.