ASUS ROG Crosshair X870E Extreme Motherboard Pictured And It Looks Slick
It looks as though ASUS is readying a new flagship socket AM5 (LGA 1718) motherboard for AMD's Ryzen 9000 series processors based on Zen 5 (as well as previous gen Zen 4 chips based on the same socket). Either that or somebody meticulously crafted convincing-looking renders showcasing the front and pack, as well as the retail packaging.
Occam's razor tells us it's the former. The trio of high quality product renders were posted to X/Twitter by @momomo_us, one of the more reliable tech leakers on the planet, so we're inclined to believe they're real. That said, the post isn't accompanied by any concrete details, such as a spec sheet, pricing, or availability. Some of that we can surmise on our own.
Starting with pricing, we'd be surprised if this launched at anything meaningfully less than a grand. The previous generation ROG Crosshair X670E Extreme debuted at $999.99, and in current economic conditions (have you see the prices for GPUs?), we'd bet a shiny nickel that the ROG Crosshair X870E Extreme will cost at least that much out of the gate. Heck, street pricing by greedy marketplace sellers is as much as twice that on the last-gen motherboard.
Our assumption is that comparatively speaking, ASUS doesn't produce as many flagship motherboards as it does its more affordable mainstream models. Outside of the extreme overclocking and ultra-enthusiast scenes, there just isn't a lot of demand for $1K motherboards.
Anticipated pricing aside, the new X870E model looks like a decadent beast. The sleek renders reveal copious cooling, a robust VRM setup, dual 8-pin EPS connectors, two reinforced PCI Express x16 slots with a redesigned Q-Release Slim mechanism for easy GPU removals (without scratching the contact points), four primary DDR5 DIMM slots plus an extra slot off the side for add-in cards, lots of I/O connectivity (including 10Gbps and 5Gbps LAN ports), onboard power and reset buttons and LED diagnostics, and an LCD screen on the I/O cover.
The shot of the retail packaging shows an included antenna for the built-in Wi-Fi, which we presume is of the Wi-Fi 7 variety. So hey, there is an added amenity for the exorbitant price. And of course the ROG Crosshair X870E Extreme will undoubtedly be a great motherboard for pushing the limits of your Ryzen CPU, especially if you take the time to tinker with all of the knobs and dials in the BIOS.
Credit to @momomo_us for sharing the photos.
