ASUS ROG Crosshair X870E Hero Motherboard Review

The I/O panel is always an interesting part of the motherboard as it dictates what connectivity options will be available.  Starting at the left we have two buttons related to CMOS control, when oveclocking you’ll get to know the Clear CMOS button well.  Next to that is a single HDMI Port connection followed by a multitude of USB ports.  Each is labeled with the USB Type-C ports being USB4 compliant at 40G speeds.  Network is handled by a single onboard 2.5Gb and 5Gb Ethernet and onboard WiFi 7 and Bluetooth.

Onboard audio is provided using the ROG SupremeFX 7.1 Surround sound processing using an ALC4082 Codec and ESS ES9219 QUAD DAC.  These are split across a single Headphone and Microphone jack with an optical out for a digital connection to an external processor. 

What I found interesting is that during my tests I was unable to do any loopback audio testing and while I was debugging the issue I realized that the onboard audio on the ROG Crosshair X870E Hero was being listed as USB audio.

While onboard audio is on its way out, I’m happy to see that the trend to separate the audio section on motherboard PCBs is still alive and well.  Of course, nobody really cares about it anymore and unless you go digging, you’re not going to find these hidden details unless you remove layers of heatsinks and covers you’re not going to find them.  But at least some motherboard engineers still care about audio quality.

One of the benefits to upgrading to a specialized motherboard is that you get a pretty awesome motherboard and some pretty nice accessories in the box.  The ASUS Crosshair X870E Hero comes with a number of nice accessories including what you see below.

What you won’t find is a full printed manual.  This has been an ongoing problem with motherboard makers looking to cut costs and while a user manual is rarely used and often lost shortly after assembling your build, it is a nice accessory to have when you are looking for information on a certain connector or want to know which memory sockets to use.  You can download one from the ROG Crosshair X870E Hero product page so, at least there is that.

I do like that you’ll get a USB key with software and drivers pre-loaded instead of having to rely on the embedded apps to download those for you.