ASUS Unveils ROG Crosshair 2006: A Retro-Themed 20th Anniversary X870E Masterpiece

Retro hardware remains hot, with some awesome recreations of classic systems, and ASUS is looking to ride the wave with a motherboard celebrating the 20th anniversary of its Republic of Gamers (ROG) brand. The ROG Crosshair 2006 motherboard has a design language that’s reminiscent of what was dominant when the company launched its first gaming focused motherboard, and certainly stands out compared to the multitide of matte black motherboards currently on the market.

PC builders will feel transported back to the early-2000s; the ROG Crosshair 2006 uses a combination of blue and white on the motherboard’s memory slots, PCI Express slots and its SATA connectors. There are no plastic shrouds hiding anything here either, its copper heatsinks are boldly shown in all their glory along with much of the PCB and its components.


The only thing that gives away that this is a motherboard from 2026 is the inclusion of a 2-inch OLED display located near the primary M.2 slot, which can display system information such as temperatures, fan speeds or CPU clock frequencies. A less noticeable, but equally modern touch, is the inclusion of the ASUS AIO Q-Connector that's optimized for compatible AIO liquid coolers.

Beneath the old school styling is a beastly motherboard, which the company says is a “cousin” of the Crosshair X870E Dark Hero. It supports  AMD’s high-end Ryzen 9000 series of processors and up to 256GB of DDR5 memory. It’s also packed with expandability options, including two PCIe 5.0 x16 slots, five M.2 slots and four SATA 6 GB/s ports. For network connectivity, there is one 10GB Ethernet port, one 5GB ethernet port, Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4.

If you've been a long-time HotHardware reader, the ROG Crosshair 2006 will certainly bring back memories of motherboards from years past.