Asus has written to HEXUS about a pair of compact new AMD X570 motherboards that will become available soon. These ROG gaming branded socket AM4 boards are the Asus ROG Crosshair VIII Impact (Mini-DTX, 20.3 x 17cm) and ROG Strix X570-I Gaming (Mini-ITX, 17 x 17cm) and are premium designs aimed at gamers and enthusiasts who intend to overclock their PCs and are likely to employ liquid cooling setups. In brief, either board will "treat users to the full-on ROG experience in a small package," says Asus. You can compare the full specs of these two motherboards via Asus' online tool here.
Whichever of these motherboards you choose, Asus has equipped Infineon TDA21472 power stages as part of its VRM architecture which it says help with rapidly changing current demands, minimising switching and conduction losses, and maintaining exemplary thermal performance.
Both boards use beefy heatsinks, plus two custom Delta Superflo fans rated to last more than 60,000 hours to cool chipset and VRM areas, plus heatpipes - with the aim of minimising any thermal throttling from these components operating with high core count processors.
The Asus ROG Crosshair VIII Impact and ROG Strix X570-I Gaming both have PCIe x16 and M.2 slots that are wired with PCIe 4.0 for high-performance graphics NVMe drive connectivity, without the worry of bandwidth constraints. Another key spec in common is the support for the latest Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) protocol for transfers at up to 2.4Gbps.
As you can see from the intro, the Asus ROG Crosshair VIII Impact is a little bit longer than its Mini-ITX sibling. However, it is still very likely to fit into a Mini-ITX chassis - but you will have to do your measurements carefully to ensure it if Mini-DTX isn't part of your old chassis spec. With its large VRM easting up board space, the Impact design has stacked storage, audio and control features onto vertical daughter boards to enable Asus engineers to fit more ATX-style niceties to this compact offering.
For storage the 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. Your installed memory can be tweaked via OptiMem III for lower latencies, voltages - and hopefully higher frequencies. Onboard audio is handled by Asus SupremeFX and an ESS ES9023P DAC on an interference-reducing dedicated card, plus ROG Sonic Studio III for immersive surround sound. Last but not least the Crosshair VIII Impact includes a dedicated header for USB 3.2 Gen 2 front panel connectors — offering users easy access to USB Type-C connectivity and up to 10Gbps transfer speeds.
The Asus ROG Strix X570-I Gaming includes an AIO pump header alongside the chassis-fan header for cooling flexibility. Audio is different from the Crosshair, with this board using SupremeFX S1220A, DTS Sound Unbound and Sonic Studio III. Checking the spec you will also note that this board works with AMD APUs, and has both HDMI 2.0 and DP 1.4 outputs on the back panel.
In its email to HEXUS, Asus said that these motherboards will be available shortly and will be priced as follows; Asus ROG Crosshair VIII Impact - £383.99 (MSRP), ROG Strix X570-I Gaming - £289.99 (MSRP).
