Asus ROG Crosshair X870E Hero review: An amazing AMD motherboard for a big price

With a value of almost $700, the Asus ROG Crosshair X870E Hero is significantly dearer than comparable choices from the competitors, and we’ll get straight to the purpose right here – this board gained’t run your AMD Ryzen CPU sooner than a less expensive choice. Nevertheless, fortunately that additional price does purchase you a sackful of additional options that go some approach to justifying the huge price ticket.

Should you’re after the most effective gaming motherboard, maybe for a shiny new Ryzen 7 9800X3D rig, then there are many choices on the market proper now, and also you’re not simply restricted to AMD’s new 800-series chipsets, however older 600-series motherboards too. The argument for the Asus ROG Crosshair X870E Hero, although, is that in case you’re planning on protecting your PC for a number of years, then spending a little bit extra will pay dividends in the long run, particularly in comparison with choosing an previous, mid-range B650 board.

There are different causes to go high-end too, corresponding to getting all of the bells and whistles you might want to construct a gaming PC with high-end specs, and possibly even water-cool your PC or overclock its CPU.

This board additionally provides you adequate M.2 ports to create an impressively big and quick storage array utilizing the most effective gaming SSD choices, whereas additionally providing sufficient energy out of your case’s entrance USB-C port to cost a laptop computer. It is likely to be overkill for many PC avid gamers, however when you’ve got critical motherboard wants, and a suitably fats pockets, then it’s properly value a glance, plus it’s enjoyable for the remainder of us to dream.

Specs

Options

As you’ll count on, there’s an enormous abundance of options out there on the Asus ROG Crosshair X870E Hero, with much more gizmos than earlier iterations of the Crosshair lineup. A lot of that is additionally now crammed onto the PCB, fairly than included within the accent field, which is admittedly disappointingly skinny.

Asus has its personal array of tool-free slogans and options on provide with its new 800-series motherboards, they usually’re in full drive on the Crosshair X870E Hero. Let’s begin with PCIe Slot Q-Launch Slim, which provides you a completely completely different strategy to eradicating your graphics card with out having to take care of the slot latch. As standard, the latter is now fully inaccessible because of large M.2 heatsinks sitting proper subsequent to it, however Asus hasn’t opted for a button mechanism right here.

As a substitute, you merely pull up the graphics card from the growth slot finish at an angle and this releases the latch. It’s disconcerting at first, as a result of in case you’ve ever forgotten to launch the latch earlier than pulling out your graphics card, you’ll know the way badly that may go (Ed: I definitely do!), and this seems like step one in the direction of that type of catastrophe. The mechanism works, but it surely isn’t fairly as confidence-inspiring as MSI or Gigabyte’s button-based mechanisms.

The Hero’s M.2 SSD ports are largely tool-free as properly, however the big decrease heatsink that covers 4 of the 5 M.2 ports makes use of screws, whereas the competitors has largely adopted tool-free heatsinks even when they’re bigger than standard. Nonetheless, the higher heatsink’s M.2 Q-Launch mechanism is straightforward to make use of and, mixed with the M.2 Q-Latch tool-free SSD set up, it takes seconds to put in an SSD and heatsink, and three of the 5 ports provide heatsinks above and under the SSD too.

One other tool-free half is the antenna for the Wi-Fi 7 adapter. That is now screw-less and the 2 connectors easy press onto ports on the I/O panel, which is definitely far much less fiddly than the previous screw fittings. Persevering with with the I/O panel for a second, Asus additionally consists of 4 USB-C ports right here, two of that are USB 4.0, with the opposite two restricted to 10Gbps, in any other case referred to as USB 3.2 Gen 2.

The six USB-A ports are all USB 3.2 Gen 2 as properly, however this quantity is a little bit missing for this value, with Gigabyte and MSI together with extra USB-A ports on cheaper boards. That quantity is sufficient for many of us, however we’re speaking a couple of high-end buyer right here, who’s more likely to have not less than half a dozen USB-A gadgets to plug into their motherboard. Even eight could be an enormous enchancment, however six is a tad disappointing, as nobody needs to have to purchase extra hubs.

It’s additionally a little bit unhappy to see 5Gb Ethernet, fairly than 10Gb, right here too, as you’ll have discovered the latter on boards on the this value a couple of years in the past. The remainder of the I/O panel provides USB BIOS FlashBack and CMOS-Clear buttons, plus an HDMI port, and people USB-C 4.0 ports additionally operate as DisplayPort outputs. In the meantime, the audio is Asus ROG SupremeFX branded, however is basically made by Realtek utilizing its 4082 codec, with two gold-plated 3.5mm jacks on the rear panel, plus an optical output.

The principle PCB additionally has some attention-grabbing options along with the same old stuff you’d count on to see on a high-end Asus motherboard, corresponding to energy and reset buttons, an LED POST code show and inputs for thermal probes and movement sensors. Firstly, there are two USB-C entrance panel ports, one in every of which provides help for QC4+ charging with an output of as much as 60W, which needs to be sufficient to cost any gadget within the foreseeable future. It’s an important place to cost your Steam Deck or laptop computer.

There’s additionally a considerably obscure SlimSAS connector, which can be utilized to broaden the variety of storage ports, corresponding to SATA, utilizing elective cables. Asus has additionally tweaked its EFI, which appears snazzier, particularly because of the brand new Q-Dashboard. The latter is a digital map of your motherboard that reveals related elements, and clicking on the varied components takes you to the mandatory choices within the EFI. The fan management part within the BIOS is as much as Asus’ standard wonderful customary too.

Design

The Asus ROG Crosshair X870E Hero is undeniably gorgeous, however whereas it doesn’t function a lot in the best way of RGB lighting and lacks the nifty removable M.2 heatsink illumination of the MSI MPG X870E Carbon WiFi, the brand new Polymo Lighting II array on the I/O shroud appears wonderful, and mimics a holographic gentle present utilizing cleverly-positioned LEDs and acrylic panels. The remainder of the PCB is all-black, however it will be good to have various white variations of the board, as Asus and others have accomplished with different fashions.

The PCB structure design can also be wonderful, with an excellent unfold of ports, together with the fan headers, which don’t endure the identical poor placement we’ve seen on Gigabyte’s X870 boards. We’d prefer to have seen extra of the PCB lined, as Asus has accomplished with the audio circuitry, however there’s a lot happening with the PCB that we will’t be too choosy right here.

The one features we’d change concerning the design are having all the M.2 heatsinks being tool-free, and maybe having a little bit extra onboard RGB lighting on a board at this value, though you do get three 3-pin ARGB ports to broaden the lighting your self.

Benchmarks

As standard, the Asus ROG Crosshair X870E Hero didn’t provide far more by the use of efficiency than different boards we’ve just lately examined, with its scores of two,314 and 140 in Cinebench R24’s multi-core and single-core checks being on par with different X870 motherboard outcomes we’ve seen. The audio was noticeably higher, although, in keeping with RightMark’s Audio Analyzer software program, with a dynamic vary of 112dBA and noise stage of -113dBA, with these outcomes simply matching the standard of normal discrete sound playing cards.

Gaming efficiency in Whole Warfare: Warhammer 3 efficiency was a little bit higher than that of the MSI MPG X870E Carbon WiFi, with a minimal 99th percentile of 165fps versus 159fps, and a mean of 224fps in comparison with 220fps, although. Energy consumption was a lot decrease at 315W versus 373W as properly, though we had been utilizing a model new BIOS for the Asus board.

Lastly, as we’ve seen beforehand, the bigger decrease M.2 slot on the Auss board was higher at cooling SSDs, with our check PCIe 5.0 SSD sitting at 70°C, in comparison with 82°C within the high slot, whereas the VRM heatsinks saved the 18+2+2 energy phases at or under 58°C in our stress check.

Worth

The Asus ROG Crosshair X870E Hero value is $679.99 proper now within the US, which isn’t nice worth for cash, however this board does have a extra aggressive value in different markets, such because the UK, the place it solely prices round £100 greater than the likes of MSI’s MPG X870E Carbon WiFi, normally going for £569.99. Even so, wherever you reside, that is nonetheless an enormous quantity to spend on a motherboard that gained’t make your PC go any sooner.

This can be a board designed for individuals who want cutting-edge options, have extraordinarily massive budgets, and should properly have already factored in the price of an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090, a number of 4TB SSDs, and a customized water-cooling loop. These fortunate few gained’t be disenchanted with this motherboard, although, and the Crosshair Hero remains to be removed from the most costly X870E motherboard too.

Alternate options

MSI MPG X870E Carbon WiFi

If you’d like a handsome premium motherboard in your AMD Ryzen CPU, however can’t stretch to the price of this luxurious Asus board, it can save you some cash by choosing this very good board from MSI. This attractive board options high quality tool-free options in your graphics card and M.2 SSDs, and its RGB lighting appears implausible, with its light-up dragon on the I/O protect, and even SSD heatsink lighting. It additionally has a great deal of USB ports, and it’s over $100 cheaper than the Asus ROG Crosshair X870E Hero.

Learn our full MSI MPG X870E Carbon WiFi assessment.

Gigabyte Aorus Elite X870 WiFi7 Ice

Based mostly on the X870 chipset, fairly than AMD’s flagship X870E, this Gigabyte motherboard doesn’t have the expansive function set of the Asus ROG Crosshair X870E Hero, but it surely nonetheless nails all of the necessities, together with tool-free GPU and SSD entry, and it runs your CPU simply as quick. It additionally appears completely attractive, regardless of its low value, with its white PCB making a great basis for a white PC construct.

Learn our full Gigabyte Aorus Elite X870 WiFi7 Ice assessment.

Verdict

Whether or not the Asus ROG Crosshair X870E Hero’s premium options are well worth the excessive value of this board largely depends upon how you’ll use it. You do get some nice options, together with a 60W USB-C entrance panel output, a wonderful EFI, nice management over your PC’s cooling, plus tool-free paraphernalia, however spending more cash on the most effective graphics card you may afford, or forking out on the most effective gaming SSD, can be far more helpful by way of efficiency for most individuals.

Nevertheless, in case you’re a serial upgrader or overclocker who dabbles in high-end cooling, and also you desire a board that’s going to maintain you content for the subsequent half a decade, or not less than till AMD ditches Socket AM5, then you definitely’re unlikely to ever discover the ROG Crosshair X870E Hero wanting. Nevertheless, the premium it calls for could be a lot better spent elsewhere in case your price range is even remotely restricted.

Should you’re trying to construct a water-cooled PC based mostly on this motherboard, ensure you additionally try our information to the most effective gaming CPU to seek out the most effective chip in your wants.