AMD X870E Motherboard Mash-Up: Three Socket AM5 Mainboards Reviewed
Finally, the most lavish of the three motherboards in this comparison is ASUS ROG's Crosshair X870E Hero. This motherboard is the most recent in a very long line of ROG Crosshair boards, occupying a position right at the top of ASUS' product stack, at least for X870E boards. It has a high price that befits its esteemed status, but you're not just paying for the branding—it has several features you won't find on the other boards.
For example, ASUS' unique Nitropath DIMM slots. These slots are actually manufactured differently, in such a way as to reduce EMI picked up by empty DIMM slots. ASUS says it's good for an extra 400 MT/s of memory overclocking, and we did actually manage to hit a higher memory clock on this board. More on that on the next page, though.
The Crosshair Hero also offers the most high-speed storage connectivity, with fully three PCIe 5.0 M.2 sockets. You also get 320-MHz Wi-Fi 7, just like with the Carbon, and it has the same set of dual Ethernet connections, albeit that one of them is Intel-powered. One disappointment is that the HDMI port doesn't appear to support FRL mode, limiting its maximum resolution and refresh rate, but it's arguable whether that really matters considering the mediocre potency of Ryzen 9000's integrated graphics.
ASUS' fanciest Socket AM5 motherboard actually has the fewest embellishments in this comparison. There is no lighting anywhere on the board save for the "Polymo Lighting II" display above the power delivery hardware. We initially thought that this was a configurable LCD like some boards have featured, but it doesn't seem like there's any way to change what's displayed on it. It's still pretty cool-looking, anyway.
Like the ASRock Nova board, the top M.2 socket is accessible without any tools, but the rest of the storage expansion requires a screwdriver. ASUS ships the X870E Hero with no less than three different types of M.2 SSD retention mechanism intended for quick and easy swapping, but you still need a screwdriver to get at them, so it's less convenient than MSI's solution.
The PCIe quick-removal slot is by far the most elegant of the three solutions, though. In essence, all you have to do is pick up the GPU from the back end, near the I/O cluster, and it will slide right out of the slot. Since that end of the GPU is normally secured to the case by one or more screws, it's a clever solution; the front end is locked in place until you lift the back end.
We wanted to take a moment to point out the extensive "armor" covering the back of the X870E Hero. Not only is it nice-looking, but it also seems to serve a dual purpose as a large heatspreader for hot VRM and storage devices. The ASRock Nova board also includes a metal backplate, but it seems to be strictly for the sake of stability—not that we're complaining.
Unfortunately, ASUS doesn't include a block diagram in its manual, although the manual is quite complete otherwise. The above chart instead illustrates something important to know about the PCIe lane allocation on this board. If you want to use that second PCIe slot or all of the M.2 SSD slots, you're going to have to sacrifice some transfer rate and possibly a slot somewhere. The extra slots serve their purpose; the X870E Hero is a versatile board that can be used in a variety of ways, but it's important to be aware that you can't actually use all of its features simultaneously.
The back of the ROG Crosshair X870E Hero is surprisingly not as packed as that of the MSI Carbon board. They're identical in every way except that the ROG board here has three less USB Type-A ports and doesn't have the programmable smart button that the Carbon does. You still get plenty of connectivity, though; if ten USB ports doesn't do it for you, we don't know what to tell you.
There is one other notable difference, too. The Wi-Fi antennae on the ASUS motherboard use a third different type of connector; neither RP-SMA nor the MCX-style plug from the Carbon. ASUS calls it "Q Antenna" and it is certainly very easy to install. A plastic sleeve on the antenna side simply slides over the poles on the motherboard, snapping into place. It seems to work great, but once again, simply be advised that you won't be able to use an existing antenna with this board.
Finally, the BIOS on the X870E Hero is both the best and the worst of the group. The main problem with it is that it is simply not responsive. While it doesn't exactly feel laggy like the Carbon's can at times, it has a strange bug where if you scroll quickly the menu's smooth scrolling logic will mess up and make it impossible to see what you're adjusting. This is easily worked around by simply being more patient when navigating the menu, but it's frustrating when you're trying to adjust settings rapidly.
However, the ROG Crosshair X870E Hero board is aimed squarely at extreme overclockers, and the UEFI setup utility reflects that. It has an absolute smorgasbord of available settings for tweaking, including many that we had to research to figure out what they do. It seems like ASUS' BIOS gives you the ability to manually tweak and adjust every single little parameter of the machine, and experienced overclockers will no doubt appreciate having all of these knobs to twiddle.
