Packaging and Accessories

The Impacts box reflects its Mini-ITX size but Asus still stuck with their typically ROG red and black styling. The cover has the board name in large letters with just a few of the required badges from Intel on the cover. The cover does open up though and inside Asus was careful to cover a few of the Impacts biggest features like the upgraded sound card, power circuitry, and the mPCIe Combo card. With a board like this, they can’t cover every feature, but I think they did a good job hitting a few key features that the competition doesn’t have. The back of the box has a few more images of other Impact features. Asus also included a line drawing of the rear I/O panel to show all of the connection options and a full specification listing as  well to help with your decision.

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For documentation Asus bundled a user guide, a driver/software disc, and a sheet of SATA label stickers. The user guide is especially impressive, this is literally a full sized book of information on the Impact.

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The rear I/O cover for the Impact is a slightly tinted silver with white legends. I personally would prefer this to have a black background to match with the black cases that most people are using. I do like that Asus used foam rather than those annoying metal springs on the back of the I/O panel.

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To go with the included wireless card (that I will talk about in the next section) Asus did include a wireless antenna with the Impact. They went with the same design that I saw with their Z87 models. The antenna has a magnet built into the back to help stick it to the side or top of your case. It can be laid flat or if you twist it at the midpoint it can be right angled. This is great for sitting it on your desk or on top of your case.

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For SATA cables Asus includes four, all with straight plugs on both ends, right angle cables wouldn’t work with the Impacts design.

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To make plugging your front panel connection in a little easier Asus also includes a small adapter cable. You can plug all of the individual plugs in out of the case were you have more room then plug just the single cable in. This is nice in any build, but when working in small Mini-ITX cases it is even more helpful.

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garfi3ld's Avatar
garfi3ld replied the topic: #35904 25 Nov 2014 06:29
Before Thanksgiving week gets in full swing I take a look at Asus's top of the line Mini-ITX Z97 motherboard. This is one of a few reviews of components going in a new project LAN build. Check it out!
Myndmelt's Avatar
Myndmelt replied the topic: #35905 26 Nov 2014 04:39
Wow it looks like they have changed very little since the Maximus VI Impact which is what I have in my LAN box. The software and bios look more advanced. Also I really like the way that red hyperx looks on that board.
garfi3ld's Avatar
garfi3ld replied the topic: #35907 26 Nov 2014 05:16
yeah this isn't a big change, just improvements on the original design along with the new Z97 chipset that is also only a small change from Z87 lol

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