ASUS ROG Crosshair X870E Hero Motherboard Review

The ASUS ROG Crosshair X870E Hero, a premium ATX motherboard, continues the legacy of high-end flagship AMD models from ASUS. The ROG Crosshair series has been a favourite among extreme overclockers since its inception in 2006. While not as extravagant as the “Extreme” variant, the Hero still boasts impressive features. With support for all the latest AM5 processors, these boards will work with AMD Ryzen 7000, 8000, and 9000 series processors, so there’s very broad support here for those wanting to get the best from their CPU of choice, be that through the motherboards broad connectivity options, overclocking, VRM, and much more beyond.

ASUS ROG Crosshair X870E Hero

ASUS equips the ROG Crosshair X870E Hero with an 18+2+2 power delivery, featuring 100A power stages. This robust power design aims to provide ample headroom for overclocking, enhancing efficiency and reducing VRM temperatures. The motherboard accommodates four DIMM slots, supporting up to 192GB of DDR5 memory. ASUS’s NitroPath DRAM Technology and Enhanced Memory Profile (AEMP) aim to improve memory performance and simplify overclocking. Storage options include five M.2 slots, with three operating at PCIe 5.0 x4 and two at PCIe 4.0 x4. Two full-length PCIe 5.0 x16 slots cater for expansion capabilities.

Dynamic OC Switcher allows automatically switching between a manual overlock for heavy multithreaded workloads and Precision Boost Overdrive for single-threaded tasks. While Overclocking Load Guard offers improved current protection, making overclocking and performance gains easier to achieve for the end user.

Key Features

• Teamed Power Solution
• AI Networking II
• Overclocking
• AI Cooling II
• One-click fan tuning
• DDR5 Max 192GB
• x3 onboard M.2 slots
• WIFI 7
• EZ PC DIY
• Polymo Lighting II
• USB4
• NitroPath DRAM Technology
• AEMP
• x2 PCIe 5.0 x16 slots

For more information, please visit the official product page here.

Memory Support

Memory support is impressive, offering up incredible speeds for these new CPUs, however, which generation of CPU you use will have some impact on the memory capabilities as you might expect, but typically they’re all over 8000 MHz.

What ASUS Had to Say

“The AI PC-ready ROG Crosshair X870E Hero offers unyielding power delivery, robust thermal management, hyperspeed connectivity, and comprehensive PCIE 5.0 and DDR5 support to unleash the performance of AMD Ryzen 9000 Series processors. Dark hues predominate across this motherboard, drawing your attention to premium metallic textures, nickel-plated surfaces, sleek contours and a stereoscopic visual effect on the large M.2 and chipset heatsink. This board also features the Polymo Lighting II effect. This upgraded lighting module built into the I/O shroud provides more dynamic RGB illumination for the signature ROG logo.” – ASUS

AMD 800 Series Chipset

While this review cycle we’ll be focusing on the X870E series of motherboards, of course, there’s going to be more to this series, with the X870E being the flagship models, the X870 below that, and then the B850 and the B840 being the more affordable models below those, but with some obvious compromises on the features, giving us a range of options for normal PC users, gamers, overclockers and enthusiasts.

Ryzen 9 9950X

For these reviews, we’ll be using the latest AMD Ryzen 9000 series CPU, and while we haven’t actually reviewed this CPU on its own, of course, we’ll be exploring the Ryzen 9 9950X performance through these motherboard reviews. We did a feature testing Windows 32H2 Vs 24H2 on YouTube recently, which you can check out here.

• 16 cores and 32 threads
• Up to 5.7 GHz max boost clock
• 64 MB of L3 cache
• Supports DDR5 memory up to 2x1R DDR5-5600 or 4x1R DDR5-3600
• Requires AM5 socket motherboard
• Includes Precision Boost Overdrive and Curve Optimizer Voltage Offsets technology
• Unlocked for overclocking
• Supports PCIe 5.0