Although AMD Ryzen 9000 series desktop processors have been on the market for some time, the newly designed 800 series chipset motherboards have not been officially launched until today, with the first wave starting with the X870E / X870 chipset. Let’s take a look at the ROG Crosshair X870E Hero motherboard launched by ASUS for high-end users!
Appearance and design
ROG Crosshair X870E Hero continues the high-end positioning of the ROG Hero class, providing the highest specifications of materials and expandability in a standard ATX size.
The appearance is based on a calm dark black tone, and is embellished with heat sinks with a metallic texture and nickel-plated surface. The stacked power supply module and M.2 heat sink add a three-dimensional feel, and the overall appearance is exquisite, stable and high-end. An armored back panel is also added to the back to enhance heat dissipation and structural strength.
This time the Polymo lighting effect makes the ROG lettering larger, and through the engravings in different directions on the inside, the light reflects the three-dimensional lettering with a gradient effect.
The power supply configuration is 18-phase 110A for CPU core + 2-phase 110A for SoC + 2-phase 90A for other components. It is equipped with MicroFine high-permeability alloy inductors that can handle 45A per phase, and 10K black metal capacitors containing high-temperature-resistant solid polymer. It’s luxury.
NitroPath memory slot
Memory slot improvement is the focus of performance innovation of ASUS X870E motherboard this time. ASUS has only introduced a new memory slot: NitroPath DRAM technology on ROG Crosshair X870E Hero and ROG Strix X870E-E Gaming WiFi motherboards.
Compared with traditional memory slots, the NitroPath slot has shorter pins and a small half-circle shape at the end, which can effectively reduce resonance. Coupled with the optimization of the internal circuit layout of the motherboard, it further Reduce noise interference, make high-frequency memory signals cleaner and smoother, and ensure stable operation even under high load.
However, the NitroPath slot abandons the original buckle-free design of the Q-DIMM slot on one side, and changes back to requiring buckles to be fixed on both sides. ASUS says this is because the NitroPath slot is designed to maximize the stability of the memory module in it and reduce wear during installation.
Taken together, the NitroPath slot can increase the speed by approximately 400 MT/s compared to traditional slots. ROG Crosshair X870E Hero claims to be able to run DDR5 memory at up to 8600 MT/s.
DIY installation friendly
In addition to memory slots, ASUS has introduced a lot of friendlier tool-less installation designs into this generation of motherboards.
Q-Release Slim
The most amazing thing is the PCIe slot of Q-Release Slim. The previous Q-Release still required an additional button to release the latch at the end of the PCIe x16 graphics card/expansion card, while Q-Release Slim only needs to be slightly pulled out for expansion. When the card faces the I/O baffle, the latch at the end will be released, allowing users to quickly remove the expansion card.
The first set of M.2 slots has M.2 Q-Release heat sink buckles and M.2 Q-Latch retainers
M.2 Q-Latch holders for the remaining 4 M.2 slots
There are many M.2 slots on the motherboard, and even more M.2 slots than PCIe slots have also been improved. First of all, the M.2 Q-Latch plastic buckle that originally required manual rotation has been changed to a spring buckle design, which can quickly fix the M.2 SSD in the spring buckle. You can release and quickly remove the M.2 SSD with a slight press. .
M.2 Q-Slide
However, M.2 Q-Latch is designed for M.2 2280-sized devices after all, so ASUS has developed M.2 Q-Slide for M.2 2240 and M.2 2260-sized devices, through the card provided with the accessory. buckles that slide and secure the device on the newly designed base plate. However, if you want to remove the M.2 Q-Slide buckle, you still need a small screwdriver to remove the bottom plate to slide the card out intact.
The BIOS has a new Q-Dashboard interface, which allows you to see the devices and status of each port on the motherboard at a glance.
Rich I/O
With the massive bandwidth channels of the X870E chipset, there are plenty of slots for connecting devices, whether internal or backplane.
There are a total of 5 groups of M.2 slots. The 3 groups with the bottom version are all PCIe 5.0 x4, and the signals come from the CPU. The group closest to the CPU is an independent channel, and the remaining 2 groups share the x16 channel supplied to the graphics card. If the device is installed, the graphics card slot channel will be reduced to x8 bandwidth. The two groups on the lower edge of the motherboard are PCIe 4.0 x4, and the signals come from the X870E chipset.
Backplane I/O
SlimSAS terminal
20 Gbps USB Type-C connector with auxiliary PCIe 8 pin power supply
All USB Type-C and Type-A on the backplane I/O start at 10 Gbps, and 2 sets of USB Type-C directly provide 40 Gbps USB4 through the ASMedia Xiangshuo ASM4242 controller.
The wired network provides 1 set of 2.5 GbE of Intel i226 and 1 set of 5 GbE of Realtek RTL8126. It is a pity that there is no 10 GbE. The wireless network adopts MediaTek’s MT7927 solution, which supports Wi-Fi 7 with 320 Hz bandwidth and Bluetooth 5.4 protocol. The antenna is connected to the previous generation’s convenient and easy-to-install Q-Antenna connector, without the need for locking nuts.
A SlimSAS interface has been added next to the SATA slot, which can connect workstation-level storage devices. There is an additional PCIe 8-pin power supply next to the ATX 24-pin power terminal, which can provide USB PD 60W power supply built-in to the 20 Gbps USB Type-C terminal on the front panel.
test environment
The X870E motherboard has better high-frequency memory compatibility than the X670E motherboard, so the CPU for this test is fixed to Ryzen 9 9950X, the ROG Crosshair X870E Hero motherboard is paired with DDR5-8000 memory, and the control group is Ryzen 9000 Data for the ROG Crosshair X670E Hero motherboard with DDR5-6400 memory at the time of launch.
Rendering operations
The rendering test schedule did not take into account the advantages of high-frequency memory. Most of the performance data of ROG Crosshair X870E Hero are slightly inferior to ROG Crosshair X670E Hero.
Comprehensive effectiveness
The comprehensive test should be affected by the optimization of the inter-core delay of high-frequency memory and AGESA PI version 1.2.0.2. The response rate of CrossMark has been greatly improved, and productivity has also improved a lot. Geekbench is a small win for multi-core, but slightly worse for single-core.
3DMark
The Time Spy test that simulates DirectX 12 games has improved both in terms of CPU and graphics, and the CPU improvement is quite obvious. However, CPU Profile is similar to rendering operations.
Game performance
Thanks to the inter-core delay optimization and high-frequency memory support of AGESA PI version 1.2.0.2, the performance of some games has improved quite a bit, mainly at Full HD 1080p and WQHD 1440p resolutions, with average improvements respectively. are 4.3% and 2.5%.
Summarize
ASUS ROG Crosshair X870E Hero motherboard combines exquisite appearance, luxurious materials and excellent expandability, with better performance NitroPath memory slots and more convenient DIY installation-friendly design, providing excellent operation for top AMD users platform.
However, until today in 2024, a high-end motherboard priced at NT$ 20,990 still does not provide 10 GbE wired network, which is really a pity.
Overall, AMD X870E / It is recommended to upgrade the CPU as needed.
