The Asus ROG Crosshair VIII Hero (Wi-Fi) joins an extended line of AMD gaming motherboard royalty. Never one to go away the purple workforce by the sidelines, Asus has put collectively one other feature-rich, high-end AM4 X570 motherboard for Ryzen 3000, bringing with it the Crosshair branding emblematic of the unfettered high quality and efficiency we’ve come to anticipate from ROG.
Like lots of the similar ilk, this X570 will set you again some change. The Hero is sort of the highest of the stack, with solely the specialist, water-cooled Crosshair VIII Formula pipping it for first. Pricing begins at $380 (£399), making the Crosshair VIII Hero one of many pricier boards we’ve had throughout our check bench. For a Ryzen 5 3600 or 3600X construct you could wish to look just a little cheaper, such because the Asus TUF Gaming X570-Plus or perhaps a B450/X470, in any other case this might make for a no holds barred Ryzen 7 3700X/3800X, or Ryzen 9 3900X/3950X rig.
It’s lots kitted out for just a little dodeca-core or hexadeca-core (don’t truth examine these prefixes) Ryzen 9 motion, the Crosshair VIII Hero that includes distinctive VRM and chipset thermal options of absolutely the unit selection. They’re each huge and all-encompassing, and the VRM heatsinks cowl the whole lot of the board’s 16-phase (doubled) VRM, 14 of that are put aside for VCore alone. You can relaxation assured that it doesn’t matter what voltage or workload you set by means of this mobo, it’s not going to prepare dinner itself within the course of.
Needless to say the Crosshair VIII Hero additionally absolutely helps PCIe 4.0. This doubling of bandwidth permits for larger I/O, storage units, and total platform bandwidth. On this specific board that notably quantities to 2 M.2 SSD slots rated to x4 PCIe 4.0. These are coated by a sizeable heatsink with single-sided thermal pad. Oddly, nonetheless, the highest M.2 slot is barely accessible by eradicating an aesthetic plate masking the chipset fan and heatsink.
The Corsair Force MP600 NVMe, fitted with the PCIe 4.Zero amiable Phison controller, managed to interrupt our SSD information because of that additional bandwidth – if solely by just a little over the theoretical max bandwidth of PCIe 3.0.
Memory assist has elevated dramatically with Ryzen 3000, and the Crosshair VIII Hero has the flexibility to cross over the 4,800MHz barrier with the precise DIMMs. However, AMD suggests you retain the Infinity Fabric clock inline with the reminiscence clock, and which means high efficiency/latency across the 3,733MHz mark.
| Asus ROG Crosshair VIII Hero (Wi-Fi) | |
| Form issue | ATX |
| CPU assist | AMD Ryzen 2000, AMD Ryzen 3000 |
| Socket | AM4 |
| Chipset | X570 |
| Memory | 4x DDR4 DIMMs, dual-channel, 4,800MHz+ (OC) |
| Expansion slots | PCIe x16 (2 / twin x8), PCIe x16 (1), PCIe x1 (1) |
| Storage | 2x M.2 (PCIe 4.0, x4), 8x SATA 6Gb/s |
| WiFi | Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX200 |
| LAN | 1x Intel WGI211AT Gigabit LAN controller 1x Realtek RTL8125 2.5 Gbps LAN controller |
| Audio | 5+ Optical S/PDIF (SupremeFX S1220 codec) |
| USB (ext) | 1x USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-C, 7x USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-A, 4x USB 3.2 Gen1 Type-A |
| USB (int) | 1x USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-C, 2x USB 3.2 Gen1 Type-A, 4x USB 2.0 |
| Price | $380 (£399) |
Complimenting the innate qualities of the X570 chipset, Asus has additionally fitted this high-end board with a veritable feast of USB connectivity. On the rear I/O of the board there are twin banks of USB 3.2, 4 ports a chunk. With a Ryzen 3000 processor put in in your board – which have to be all of you as a result of shopping for an X570 for a 1st or 2nd Gen Ryzen chip is maniacal – the financial institution highlighted in purple will run at Gen2 speeds direct from the CPU. Otherwise each banks will revert to Gen1 speeds. Alongside that, there’s additionally one other trio of Type-A Gen2 ports and a single Type-C port.
Networking is equally an elective affair. Both Realtek RTL8125-CG 2.5G and Intel I211-AT LAN ports can be found through the rear I/O. And if you want to haul your rig out of attain of your router, there’s all the time the built-in Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX200 to maintain your connection constant and steady.
Despite the tears of audiophiles in every single place, most avid gamers will discover themselves plugging their headsets into their machine immediately. If that’s through a 3.5mm connection, you’re going to search out your self on Asus’ ROG SupremeFX S1220 codec and the ESS ES9023P DAC with stable readability and little to no fuzz.
Yet for all its successes, buying the Asus ROG Crosshair VIII Hero stays a farsighted funding within the PCIe 4.Zero ecosystem. A hope that, in the future, a graphics card would require PCIe 4.Zero and will probably be all the higher for it. Until then, motherboard efficiency is just too nuanced, and avid gamers have little to realize from the transfer to X570 past the dreaded ‘future-proofing’ spiral and a handful of high-end options.
But possibly you’re reduce from a distinct fabric: a part of the money-no-object market AMD’s eyeing up with its excessive core-count Ryzen 3000 processors. In that case, possibly this PCIe 4.Zero enterprise is price a punt.
The Asus ROG Crosshair VIII Hero presents peace of thoughts. If you want a characteristic in the future, or a dizzying quantity of USB ports, odds on it’s already current and accounted for in your mobo. That’s what you get with a high-quality, fanatic motherboard, and that’s what you’re paying out of pocket for. Whether that’s sufficient to persuade you over to the X570 in a backwards suitable AM4 dreamland the place yesterday’s high motherboards are cheaper than ever, that’s up so that you can resolve. But I’m going to guess that any one of many quite a few B450 and X470 motherboards out there right this moment vying for your online business will serve the common gamer simply as effectively for a few years to come back.
Join the dialog over on Facebook and Twitter.
Source
