ASUS at their Computex 2019 motherboard seminar showcased their upcoming AMD X570 chipset motherboards. While there are tons of interesting ATX boards revealed, one motherboard caught my attention and that is no other than the Mini-DTX form factor ASUS ROG Crosshair VIII Impact.
The ROG Crosshair VIII Impact is what I could say the epitome of ASUS’ engineering prowess and passion for the SFF crowd. That’s at least true if we’re talking about AMD’s PCI-E 4.0 conforming X570 chipset. This particular board houses one PCI-E 4.0 slot, dual channel DDR4 DIMMS, two M.2 slots via the SO-DIMM expansion card, a lot of back panel ports plus SATA and a Wi-Fi 6 conforming wireless network to name a few.
Why Mini-DTX
ASUS went Mini-DTX for a couple of reasons. The number one reason is of course the benefit of extra space for better expansion capabilities. Recently released SFF cases could also house the Mini-DTX form factor with ease so there’s basically no reason for ASUS not to grab the opportunity.
Flexibility and features
The ASUS Crosshair VIII Impact had its PCH cooled by the VRM heatsinks. Since the new X570 chipset requires a better cooling compared to the norm, ASUS had no choice but to employ two 40mm fans to help dissipate heat from both sources. Heatsink material appears to be a dense stack of aluminum heat fins. That’s something I really miss from today’s motherboard heatsink designs.
ASUS also decided to utilize a SO-DIMM slot for the M.2 SSD’s expansion card dubbed as the ROG SO-DIMM.2. This should ensure better thermals, easier access, better utilization of the PCI-E 4.0’s bandwidth without requiring bifurcation and the flexibility to install AM4 coolers of varying sizes. The expansion card also features PWM fan headers and an addressable header for the RGB lighting.
ASUS also decided to ditch the whole daughter board idea with the SupremeFX audio solution on the Crosshair VIII. Instead, it is now underneath the PCI-E 4.0 x16 slot next to the yet to be specified angled headers.
Perhaps another nice feature of the board is the inclusion of 8 SATA headers. That’s astounding for its size and could be a major turn-on for the SFF crowd wanting a capable motherboard with storage and space saving features in mind. We also like the idea of relocating the 8-pin CPU power near the 24-pin power connector. That will certainly make cable management a little better.
For the full technical specifications of the Mini-DTX motherboard, you may refer from the official table below.
| Model Name | ROG Crosshair VIII Impact | |
| CPU | AMD AM4 Socket for 3rd and 2nd Gen AMD Ryzen™/2nd and 1st Gen AMD Ryzen™ with Radeon™ Vega Graphics Processors | |
| Chipset | AMD X570 Chipset | |
| Form Factor | Mini-DTX (8.0″ x 6.7″ in.) | |
| Memory | 2 DDR4/ 64 GB | |
| Graphics Output | N/A | |
| Expansion Slot | PCIe 4.0 x 16 | 1 @ x16 |
| PCIe 4.0 x 16 | N/A | |
| PCIe 4.0 x1 | N/A | |
| Storage & Connectivity | SATA 6Gb/s | 4 |
| U.2 | 0 | |
| M.2 | 1x 2280
(SATA + PCIe 4.0 x4) |
|
| 1x 2280
(SATA + PCIe 4.0 x4) |
||
| USB 3.2 Gen 2 front panel connector | 1 | |
| USB 3.2 Gen 2 | 5 x Type-A at back
1 x Type-C at back |
|
| USB 3.2 Gen 1 | 2 x Type-A at back
2 x Type-A at front |
|
| USB 2.0 | 2 | |
| Networking | Gigabit Ethernet | Intel® I211AT |
| Wireless | Intel® Wireless-AX 200
2 x 2 Wi-Fi 6 (802.11 a/b/g/n/ac/ax) with MU-MIMO supports dual frequency band 2.4/5GHz Bluetooth v5.0 |
|
To learn more about the full ASUS X570 chipset motherboard line-up, head over to the official located here.
