We will be reviewing the ROG Crosshair VIII Impact, a X570 chipset with mATX form factor.
Disclaimer that this motherboard was purchased 2nd hand so we don't have the complete package from it's box.
FULL SPECIFICATION
Same with Mini-ITX motherboards, The ROG Crosshair VIII Impact has 2 slots for memory and can only go up to 64Gb. We also noticed that the M.2 slots are placed on the ROG SO-DIMM.2 module that comes in the package and can accomodate 1 M.2 SSD on each side.
DESIGN AND AESTHETICS
Design wise, we can say that ROG alway consider giving its audience more "gamery" vibe on their products especially the flagship models, and the ROG Crosshair VIII Impact is no exception.
On the VRM part of the motherboard, they placed small fans that will cool your VRMs even though you set up the monitor in a small rig.
This chunk of heatsink and fan combination made the design move its CPU connector from the top right area to the upper left part of the motherboard just above the 24-pin connector of the motherboard.
The ROG SO-DIMM.2 slot is also placed below the CPU socket where typically the M.2 slot is placed just above the PCIe slot for the graphics card.
With this kind of design, you can squeeze in 2 M.2 slots with just a centimeter of area, though we feel like in long term, this may cause issues especially if you are always changing your SSD or swapping it with other M.2 SSDs. The way it is placed is like a graphics card that is a bit flimsy for us and moving your PC more often can make it shake and may cause SSD failures.
The design is proprietary though unique, which means you can't use it on other motherboards and we find it a hassle to install or reinstall our SSD because you need to remove 3 screws from the side you want to install your SSD.
The other unique part of the motherboard is the audio, it is also modular where you need to remove some screws just to connect the audio connector from our chassis.
We thought that since this is an old model, it might have been that this design is popular before when it was being develop, though comparing to the recent mini-ITX and mATX motherboards today, we can say that the design of the ROG Crosshair VIII Impact is some what experimental.
The Back I/O ports however gave us a more peculiar look when we checked on it, they place the Q-Code LED below the WIFI module.
We usually don't see this kind of design before, we often look at the Q-Code or Q-LED within the motherboard and not at the back, this lead us to look back at the back I/O once in a while when our PC is not booting properly to check what could be the issue.
This also lead the motherboard to ditch out the display ports such as the HDMI or DP.
What we love about the specs at the back I/O is the presence of the USB Type-C and the WIFI 6 module, making it maximize our WIFI 6 router and the USB-C drives.
BENCHMARKS
We did some benchmarks on the motherboard along with the other components. We also do some game benchmark to show the stability of the motherboard with the other components.
PC BUILD SPECIFICATIONS
We start with the synthetic benchmarks and the most popular one is the Cinebench 2024, that measures the processor muti-core and single core process
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| Cinebench 2024 Results |
The above results cause the CPU temp soar to 90 degrees and the GPU temp to 69 degrees while the motherboard only reached 30 degrees.
We also did Blender benchmark on both CPU and GPU
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| CPU results in Blender |
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| GPU results in Blender |
We also did test the M.2 storage and USB Type-C thru CrystalDiskMark and here are the results.
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| NVMe SSD result in CrystalDiskMark |
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| USB Type-C results in CrystalDiskMark |
Another benchmark we did is GeekBench 6 on both CPU and GPU.
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| CPU result in GeekBench 6 |
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| GPU result in GeekBench 6 |
And lastly we did try to test the WIFI connection thru LAN Speed, though we only did the WIFI since our setup is far from our router and we have no available long LAN cable to use.
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| WIFI test result in LANSpeed |
With the results of the benchmark above we can say that the stability of the CPU and GPU using the ROG Crosshair VIII Impact is more than what we expect, especially the temp results on both components are incredible. We can definitly say that the additional mini fans on the VRM area give a more cool boost to the whole system.
GAMING BENCHMARK
Like we said on our last PC Build review, this review will not be complete without testing out AAA games. With the specs we have, we can say that we can definitely play those AAA games without any hassle, so here are some of our benchmark. We did play 6 games only with some are AAA games and some are esports game and all games are played on a 4K monitor to maximize the CPU and GPU combo
As you can see the average FPS are all over 100 in 4K which we can say came from the performance of the CPU plus GPU combination but what amaze us is the CPU temp that you can see below.
All temps are below 70 degrees which is amazing because all games we played are in 4K resolution and all are max settings.
This graph shows the power draw of the CPU while playing high settings games which as you can see are 80 watts and below.
CONCLUSION
There are a lot of new PC components today especially the announcement of the latest NVIDIA RTX 50 series and new processor from both Intel and AMD, but with even the older model components can still work amazing with the new AAA game titles with less temp and power consumption.
We can say that having the ROG Crosshair VIII Impact for AMD Ryzen 5000 series especially the OG Ryzen 7 5800X3D is a good option except for the SSD, we still think that the SO-DIMM slot is not a stable connection for your NVMe SSD.
With this we will be giving a Class A Award for the ROG Crosshair VIII Impact.
Here are at All of the Above we have a way to award our review products. These are the scores we give the ROG Crosshair VIII Impact.
- 8/10 for overall design
- 10/10 for performance
- 7/10 for price, as of writing, this motherboard is being sold for roughly PHP 21,000 to PHP 23, 000
Overall, we are giving the ROG Crosshair VIII Impact an 8/10 overall score. Great performance but still expensive for a 5 year old motherboard and with a peculiar design format
We will try to test other components this year to check if your value for money on the latest pc tech components are worth it. Let us know what you want us to review next, leave you comment below.
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