ASUS ROG Strix X870-A Gaming WIFI Motherboard Review

Peter Donnell / 7 hours ago

A Closer Look

While this isn’t the most extreme motherboard in the ASUS range, you would be hard-pushed to say it wasn’t. It has a very stylish design, but while the armour and heatsinks have obvious aesthetic qualities, they’re all built for a purpose too.

The large VRM configuration is going to help you push CPU performance, with a 16+2+2 Power Stage rated for up to 90A per stage. This is then cooled by the two huge heatsinks on the top and left side of the CPU. As well as 5K Black metallic capacitors throughout the board’s design.

Below that, there’s a thick heatsink for the primary M.2 Gen5 slot, as those flagship drives can get pretty toasty, so this should be more than enough to ensure the best performance.

however, the entire lower section of the motherboard is also armoured with huge heatsinks, ensuring that all additional M.2 mounts also get the best cooling performance.

1 x M.2 22110 (PCIe 5.0 x4)
1 x M.2 2280 (PCIe 5.0 x4)
2 x M.2 2280 (PCIe 4.0 x4)

The top PCIe slot is reinforced, so that’ll easily deal with chunky graphics cards. The bottom one is reinforced, but not armoured, but it is finished in white to match the motherboard’s design.

There’s also powerful onboard audio with the ROG SupremeFX 7.1 Surround Sound High Definition Audio CODEC ALC4080.

Impedance sense for front and rear headphone outputs
Supports: Jack-detection, Multi-streaming, Front Panel MIC Jack-retasking
High-quality 120 dB SNR stereo playback output and 110 dB SNR recording input
Supports up to 32-Bit/384 kHz playback on front panel

Audio Features

SupremeFX Shielding Technology
Savitech SV3H712 AMP
Rear optical S/PDIF outport
Premium audio capacitors

Plus, there’s a comprehensive rear I/O, offering up USB4 Type-C, WiFi 7, 2.5 Gbps LAN, and much more.

Rear USB (Total 12 ports)

2 x USB4 (40Gbps) ports(2 x USB Type-C with DP Alt mode)
6 x USB 10Gbps ports (5 x Type-A + 1 x USB Type-C with up to 30W PD Fast-charge)
4 x USB 5Gbps ports (4 x Type-A)

Front USB (Total 9 ports)