ASUS Z170 Maximus VIII Hero Alpha Review

Test Setup

It’s worth noting at the start that the Hero Alpha gave out pretty much identical results to the regular Maximus VIII Hero, and so our graphs are included for completions sake rather than demonstrating a change in performance. This is a Hero that allows you to adjust the lighting and gain ridiculous storage bandwidth, not a wholesale adjustment of the hardware.

ASUS Maximus VIII Hero Alpha
Intel Core i7-6700K
2666MHz Memory
3600MHz Memory
nVidia GTX980
Corsair AX1500i
Corsair Neutron GTX
Corsair H100i
Windows 10  

Lighting Control

This is the heart of the AURA Lighting Control. All of us at some point have picked a theme we wanted for our systems, and all of us have grown weary of it eventually and wanted a change. No longer are you a slave to the colours you picked initially, nor indeed to the colours that are available (usually, red or blue), but instead with full RGB lighting and the Hero Alpha you can have it, to paraphrase Henry Ford, any colour you like.  We wouldn’t necessarily want to utilise the strobe or CPU temperature options ourself, but it’s nice to see ASUS covering everyone from the paranoid to the EDM maniacs.