Keep in mind that the X870 chipset is the flagship chipset for the new motherboards, so all of these are regarded as high-end motherboards. However, there are of course more affordable X870 and more premium X870 motherboards in this launch, with the largest variance being increased VRM, which is paired with larger VRM cooling solutions, which increases the price. The number of M.2 mounts, USB ports, and networking, for example, will all increase the price too. This is why the cheapest board such as the Prime starts at around $249, while a flagship board such as the crosshair is $699, despite using the same chipset and AM5 socket. Unfortunately, we don’t have UK pricing for these boards at the time of writing but will update that with retail links as soon as they’re available sometime after we publish these reviews.
However, what we can see is how these prices have changed since the previous generation (X670) motherboards launched, and largely they’re all about the same, with the Prime coming in cheaper than before, and the ProArt a little more expensive, but overall, they’re all in a similar price bracket as before.
In the US, prices for the X670/X670E and X870/X870E versions of the motherboards are generally the same, with a few exceptions. The ASUS Prime X70-P WIFI shows a 16.72% lower price for the X870/X870E version, while the ASUS ProArt X70E-Creator WIFI is 7.88% more expensive for the X870/X870E version. The ASUS ROG STRIX X70-A Gaming WIFI has a 7.52% lower price for the X870/X870E version, and the ASUS TUF Gaming X70-Plus WIFI is 6.08% cheaper in its X870/X870E version.
However, we don’t have UK pricing for these boards at the moment, and we don’t have pricing for the MSI Carbon or the Gigabyte Aorus ICE, but again, we’ll update you with these as soon as possible once the NDA lifts.
If these are too expensive for you, there will be more affordable B-series motherboards coming, but we suspect these will be revealed at CES 2025 and launch in Q1 2025, if you can wait that long, if not, then the X-series boards are clearly some of the best options right now for those building an AMD focused build.
This is a major chipset launch for AMD, so there are dozens of new X870 motherboards hitting the market today. Of course, we’ve been very busy testing 9 of them for you, and they’re all linked below, so if the one in this review isn’t quite meeting your needs, there’s plenty more to choose from! Largely, all being the same chipset, with the same AMD 9950X CPU being used for our testing, we expect the majority of the benchmarks to be broadly the same, with perhaps small differences in some of them. Largely, the price and performance of each motherboard are dictated by the additional features. Such as more PCIe slots, more M.2 mounts in Gen3, Gen4, or Gen5, more high-speed USB ports, more cooling hardware, etc. Largely, we recommend buying a motherboard that meets your current component requirements, with a little overhead for future upgrades; a spare M.2 slot for example.
This is a flagship motherboard from ASUS, so it’s no surprise that we saw competitive performance from it. However, the real reason this motherboard costs more is simply because it has a lot more features than most. I doubt everyone would need this much connectivity, but if you need it, the Crosshair has all the answers you could need.
There is a massively upgraded VRM configuration, so for heavy workloads and gaming sessions, it’s going to maintain its performance without thermal throttling issues. 18+2+2 VRM with 100A Power Stages is certainly on the extreme side but does increase the price. Of course, there’s a plethora of massive heatsinks on the VRM, and on every M.2 mount too, ensuring you always get the best performance.
Its storage is really extreme too, with three PCIe 5.0 x4 and two at PCIe 4.0 x4, and plenty of support for RAID configurations, ensuring you have extreme read/write speeds should you need them. Plus, it’s one of the few motherboards with two full-length PCIe 5.0 x16 slots, making it ideal for those running dual GPUs for things like CAD, rendering, and AI tasks.
You’re also paying a premium for expanded connectivity, so if you need multiple expansion cards, a heavily overclocked processor, overclocked memory, RAID M.2 drives, and then a lot of super-fast USB ports on the back, as well as flagship WiFi7 and LAN networking, then the Crosshair has it all!
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