It’s nice to really have the latest tech, however when previous era products continue sale, you save a chunk of change without reducing much in the form of performance. Such is the situation with Intel’s Z170 chipset, and specifically the Asus ROG Maximus VIII Hero/Whetsone that’s available at Newegg for $100 following a $50 mail-in-rebate.
That’s half from the MSRP, and quite somewhat cheaper than what it typically provides for. In addition, it beats the offer at Amazon, which includes it posted for $184 with a $35 mail-in-rebate available, providing the price right down to $149.
The Z170 chipset is currently two decades old, with Intel lately bringing out its Z370 chipset for Caffeine Lake. Just like the Z270, there is absolutely no upgrade way to Coffee Lake over a Z170, though it can support Skylake and Kaby Lake CPUs.
In comparison to Z270, the Z170 offers four fewer PCIe 3.0 lanes (20 total) and will not support Intel’s Optane Memory space technology. Often the feature-sets are interchangeable.
For the Asus ROG Maximus VIII Hero/Whetstone, it helps up to 64GB of DDR4-3600+ (OC) ram and has three PCIe 3.0 x16 slot machines, three PCIe 3.0 x1 slot machine games, six SATA plug-ins, two SATA Exhibit jacks, and an M.2 outlet.
Other features include one-touch overclocking, a normal water pump header for liquid chilling setups, an electronic power controller, and undoubtedly the nifty Q-connector that Asus includes numerous motherboards to make connecting leading -panel cables easier. Reuters
