ASUS Prime X870-P WIFI Motherboard Review

Peter Donnell / 2 months ago

A Closer Look

The power delivery is competent, but certainly more modest compared to what we’ve seen on the STRIX and CROSSHAIR motherboards. You still get a 14+2+1 Power Stage that can operate at up to 80A per stage, and it’s good to see that the largest heatsinks are placed on those important VRMs, which should help ensure system stability for high-end CPUs.

There are four M.2 mounts on this motherboard, with the topmost and second having their own dedicated heatsinks, while the lower two are exposed, but obviously the heatsinks are what you’ll want to use for the more performance-focused drives supported. However, keep in mind that M.2 support can change based on the CPU you’re using.

AMD Ryzen 9000 & 7000 Series Desktop Processors
- M.2_1 slot (Key M), type 2280 (supports PCIe 5.0 x4 mode)
AMD Ryzen 8000 Series Desktop Processors
- M.2_1 slot (Key M), type 2280 (supports PCIe 4.0 x4 mode)
AMD X870 Chipset
- M.2_2 slot (Key M), type 2242/2260/2280 (supports PCIe 4.0 x4 mode)
- M.2_3 slot (Key M), type 2280 (supports PCIe 4.0 x4 mode)
- M.2_4 slot (Key M), type 2280 (supports PCIe 3.0 x2 mode)

The drive features a good array of PCIe slots though, with a more durable Gen5 first slot to deal with your graphics card, but the further slots are a bit of a muddled mess, with some tied to the M.2 slots you can use one or other other, and it’s best to check the expansion slots support on the product page here.

Sound comes from the built-in Realtek 7.1 Surround Sound High Definition Audio CODEC, which supports Jack-detection, Multi-streaming, Front Panel Jack-retasking and supports up to 24-Bit/192 kHz playback. The rear I/O is well equipped though, with two USB 4 ports giving us a surprisingly premium feature for a board of this class, but also still a decent mixture of ports overall, as well as fast ethernet and WiFi.