ASUS ROG Crosshair X870E Hero Motherboard Review

It is interesting to see how technology changes when it comes to compatible hardware that is built on different platforms.  For the longest time, Intel was the gamer processor of choice and most every bit of software was written with Intel technology in mind.  AMD has always been the rouge underdog often innovating and bringing new technology to market and the latest Ryzen 9 9950X is no exception.  This massive 16 core processor it quite the power house and does quite well under certain conditions.

In this review we looked at the ASUS ROG Crosshair X870E Hero.  This is the flagship motherboard offering for the AMD X870 chipset providing support for the latest Ryzen 9 9000 series processors and packing in a number of AI supported features including enhancements to the popular AI overclocking feature that we have seen on previous ROG boards.

As with most ROG flagships this motherboard is designed for overclocking and has currently set quite a few world records and hardware first place scores on HWBOT making it a great platform for those looking to experiment with overclocking or seasoned veterans looking to gobble up a few points with extreme overclocking under LN2.

In this review I was able to put the Crosshair X870E Hero under my Single Stage Phase chiller and despite the mismatched mounting plate I was able to get a rather decent 5.5Ghz across all cores with 5.6Ghz and 5.7Ghz achievable in certain benchmarks.  Sadly, the curse of the HIS (Integrated Heat Spreader) combined with a power-hungry multi-core CPU prevents the SS Phase from being all that effective.  Much like on the Intel platform, the CPU will often be 50c+ while the phase head is at -30c.  Which helps keep the processor “cooler” but doesn’t do much to maintain an overclock under high stress benchmarks.

From a performance standpoint I am rather impressed with the Crosshair X870E Hero and Ryzen 9 9950X.  Combined the platform was flawless and offered amazing out of box performance.  The Ryzen 9 9950X is a 4.3Ghz processor but, would boost up to 5.5 and 5.7Ghz during normal operation giving users a nice edge in performance that rivals the previous generation Core i9 14900k 24 core processor.  I found that the Granite Ridge memory controller was quite good and would respond extremely well to frequency adjustments and accepted every DDR5 memory module I tried. 

Onboard the ROG Crosshair X870E Hero supports up to 5x M.2 hard drive locations with three of them supporting PCI Express 5.0.  The onboard storage heatsinsks feature dual sided thermal pads for every PCIe 5.0 location ensuring that your drives will remain cool and provide the best performance under extended loads.

Overall, I found the Crosshair X870E Hero to be an amazing motherboard with support for all of the latest connection standards, extended storage options and enough overclocking features to make Extreme Overclocking a little easier with a dedicated mode for LN2 and every sort of memory control you could imagine.  It goes without saying that the ROG Crosshair X870E Hero would feel right at home on both an overclockers test bench and enthusiasts high-end gaming build.

Next Generation Design
Solid Performance
Unlocked CPU Support
DDR5 Loves to Overclock
Supports Five M.2 Drives
PCI Express 5.0
Excellent Industrial Design
Great Gaming Platform

CPU overclocking only good under LN2
Almost too many memory controls in UEFI