Asus Maximus VIII Hero Review

Overclocking and EFI

4.8GHz has proven itself to be the baseline in overclocking our Core i7-6770K - anything less loses marks and anything more is outstanding. Most of the boards we've looked at so far managed the magic 4.8GHz number and early testing saw the Hero manage a rock-solid 4.9GHz.

However, updating to the latest EFI and then running through our full suite of tests saw Terragen 3 fail, even if we ramped up the vcore to over 1.4V. In the end, we settled with 4.8GHz, but the Hero was very power-frugal, needing just 1.32V to get there. Given more time to tweak things, 4.9GHz would definitely have been on the cards so this is one of the best Skylake overclocking boards we've seen so far.

The latest ROG EFI is as good as ever and not a lot has changed. The vast majority of overclocking settings are still within the Extreme Tweaker section, making modest or massive overclocks both easy and quick to achieve. As with most boards now, there's a large favourites section where you can dump all your favourite options for easy access - useful as important settings such as Loadline calibration are located within subsections.

SSD secure erase returns in its EFI-embedded form - very useful to have if you're selling an SSD or just want to wipe its brain prior to reinstalling Windows. Asus's fan control suite is pretty much the best out there too, with the ability to switch off system fans until temperatures reach certain levels - something that's not possible on many motherboards, plus there's also the ability to fine-tune the fan profile curve for all fans, including the CPU.