An amazing AMD motherboard for a big price

With a price of nearly $700, the Asus ROG Crosshair X870E Hero is considerably more expensive than similar offerings from the competition, and we’ll get straight to the point here – this board won’t run your AMD Ryzen CPU faster than a cheaper option. However, thankfully that extra cost does buy you a sackful of extra features that go some way to justifying the massive price tag.

If you’re after the best gaming motherboard, perhaps for a shiny new Ryzen 7 9800X3D rig, then there are plenty of options out there right now, and you’re not just limited to AMD’s new 800-series chipsets, but older 600-series motherboards too. The argument for the Asus ROG Crosshair X870E Hero, though, is that if you’re planning on keeping your PC for several years, then spending a little more can pay dividends in the long term, especially compared to opting for an old, mid-range B650 board.

There are other reasons to go high-end too, such as getting all the bells and whistles you need to build a gaming PC with high-end specs, and maybe even water-cool your PC or overclock its CPU.

This board also gives you enough M.2 ports to create an impressively huge and fast storage array using the best gaming SSD options, while also offering enough power from your case’s front USB-C port to charge a laptop. It might be overkill for most PC gamers, but if you have serious motherboard needs, and a suitably fat wallet, then it’s well worth a look, plus it’s fun for the rest of us to dream.

Specs

Features

As you would expect, there’s a huge abundance of features available on the Asus ROG Crosshair X870E Hero, with even more gizmos than previous iterations of the Crosshair lineup. Much of this is also now crammed onto the PCB, rather than included in the accessory box, which is admittedly disappointingly thin.

Asus has its own array of tool-free slogans and features on offer with its new 800-series motherboards, and they’re in full force on the Crosshair X870E Hero. Let’s start with PCIe Slot Q-Release Slim, which gives you a totally different approach to removing your graphics card without having to deal with the slot latch. As usual, the latter is now completely inaccessible thanks to massive M.2 heatsinks sitting right next to it, but Asus hasn’t opted for a button mechanism here.

Instead, you simply pull up the graphics card from the expansion slot end at an angle and this releases the latch. It’s disconcerting at first, because if you’ve ever forgotten to release the latch before pulling out your graphics card, you’ll know how badly that can go (Ed: I certainly do!), and this feels like the first step towards that kind of disaster. The mechanism works, but it isn’t quite as confidence-inspiring as MSI or Gigabyte’s button-based mechanisms.

The Hero’s M.2 SSD ports are mostly tool-free as well, but the huge lower heatsink that covers four of the five M.2 ports uses screws, whereas the competition has largely adopted tool-free heatsinks even if they’re larger than usual. Still, the upper heatsink’s M.2 Q-Release mechanism is easy to use and, combined with the M.2 Q-Latch tool-free SSD installation, it takes seconds to install an SSD and heatsink, and three of the five ports offer heatsinks above and below the SSD too.

Another tool-free part is the antenna for the Wi-Fi 7 adapter. This is now screw-less and the two connectors simple press onto ports on the I/O panel, which is certainly far less fiddly than the old screw fittings. Continuing with the I/O panel for a moment, Asus also includes four USB-C ports here, two of which are USB 4.0, with the other two limited to 10Gbps, otherwise known as USB 3.2 Gen 2.

The six USB-A ports are all USB 3.2 Gen 2 as well, but this number is a little lacking for this price, with Gigabyte and MSI including more USB-A ports on cheaper boards. That number is enough for most of us, but we are talking about a high-end customer here, who is likely to have at least half a dozen USB-A devices to plug into their motherboard. Even eight would be a huge improvement, but six is a tad disappointing, as no one wants to have to buy additional hubs.

It’s also a little sad to see 5Gb Ethernet, rather than 10Gb, here too, as you would have found the latter on boards at the this price a few years ago. The rest of the I/O panel offers USB BIOS FlashBack and CMOS-Clear buttons, plus an HDMI port, and those USB-C 4.0 ports also function as DisplayPort outputs. Meanwhile, the audio is Asus ROG SupremeFX branded, but is essentially made by Realtek using its 4082 codec, with two gold-plated 3.5mm jacks on the rear panel, plus an optical output.

The main PCB also has some interesting features in addition to the usual stuff you’d expect to see on a high-end Asus motherboard, such as power and reset buttons, an LED POST code display and inputs for thermal probes and flow sensors. Firstly, there are two USB-C front panel ports, one of which offers support for QC4+ charging with an output of up to 60W, which should be enough to charge any gadget in the foreseeable future. It’s a great place to charge your Steam Deck or laptop.

There’s also a somewhat obscure SlimSAS connector, which can be used to expand the number of storage ports, such as SATA, using optional cables. Asus has also tweaked its EFI, which looks snazzier, especially thanks to the new Q-Dashboard. The latter is a virtual map of your motherboard that shows connected components, and clicking on the various parts takes you to the necessary options in the EFI. The fan control section in the BIOS is up to Asus’ usual excellent standard too.

Design

The Asus ROG Crosshair X870E Hero is undeniably stunning, but while it doesn’t feature much in the way of RGB lighting and lacks the nifty detachable M.2 heatsink illumination of the MSI MPG X870E Carbon WiFi, the new Polymo Lighting II array on the I/O shroud looks amazing, and mimics a holographic light show using cleverly-positioned LEDs and acrylic panels. The rest of the PCB is all-black, but it would be nice to have alternative white versions of the board, as Asus and others have done with other models.

The PCB layout design is also excellent, with a good spread of ports, including the fan headers, which don’t suffer the same poor placement we’ve seen on Gigabyte’s X870 boards. We’d like to have seen more of the PCB covered, as Asus has done with the audio circuitry, but there’s so much going on with the PCB that we can’t be too picky here.

The only aspects we’d change about the design are having all of the M.2 heatsinks being tool-free, and perhaps having a little more onboard RGB lighting on a board at this price, although you do get three 3-pin ARGB ports to expand the lighting yourself.

Benchmarks

As usual, the Asus ROG Crosshair X870E Hero didn’t offer much more by way of performance than other boards we’ve recently tested, with its scores of 2,314 and 140 in Cinebench R24’s multi-core and single-core tests being on par with other X870 motherboard results we’ve seen. The audio was noticeably better, though, according to RightMark’s Audio Analyzer software, with a dynamic range of 112dBA and noise level of -113dBA, with these results easily matching the quality of standard discrete sound cards.

Gaming performance in Total War: Warhammer 3 performance was a little better than that of the MSI MPG X870E Carbon WiFi, with a minimum 99th percentile of 165fps versus 159fps, and an average of 224fps compared to 220fps, though. Power consumption was much lower at 315W as opposed to 373W as well, although we were using a brand new BIOS for the Asus board.

Finally, as we’ve seen previously, the larger lower M.2 slot on the Auss board was better at cooling SSDs, with our test PCIe 5.0 SSD sitting at 70°C, compared to 82°C in the top slot, while the VRM heatsinks kept the 18+2+2 power phases at or below 58°C in our stress test.

Price

The Asus ROG Crosshair X870E Hero price is $679.99 right now in the US, which isn’t great value for money, but this board does have a more competitive price in other markets, such as the UK, where it only costs around £100 more than the likes of MSI’s MPG X870E Carbon WiFi, usually going for £569.99. Even so, wherever you live, this is still a huge amount to spend on a motherboard that won’t make your PC go any faster.

This is a board designed for people who need cutting-edge features, have extremely large budgets, and may well have already factored in the cost of an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090, multiple 4TB SSDs, and a custom water-cooling loop. Those lucky few won’t be disappointed with this motherboard, though, and the Crosshair Hero is still far from the most expensive X870E motherboard too.

Alternatives

MSI MPG X870E Carbon WiFi

If you want a good-looking premium motherboard for your AMD Ryzen CPU, but can’t stretch to the cost of this luxury Asus board, you can save some money by opting for this superb board from MSI. This gorgeous board features quality tool-free features for your graphics card and M.2 SSDs, and its RGB lighting looks fantastic, with its light-up dragon on the I/O shield, and even SSD heatsink lighting. It also has loads of USB ports, and it’s over $100 cheaper than the Asus ROG Crosshair X870E Hero.

Read our full MSI MPG X870E Carbon WiFi review.

Gigabyte Aorus Elite X870 WiFi7 Ice

Based on the X870 chipset, rather than AMD’s flagship X870E, this Gigabyte motherboard doesn’t have the expansive feature set of the Asus ROG Crosshair X870E Hero, but it still nails all the essentials, including tool-free GPU and SSD access, and it runs your CPU just as fast. It also looks absolutely gorgeous, despite its low price, with its white PCB making an ideal foundation for a white PC build.

Read our full Gigabyte Aorus Elite X870 WiFi7 Ice review.

Verdict

Whether the Asus ROG Crosshair X870E Hero’s premium features are worth the high price of this board largely depends on how you will use it. You do get some great features, including a 60W USB-C front panel output, an excellent EFI, great control over your PC’s cooling, plus tool-free paraphernalia, but spending more money on the best graphics card you can afford, or splashing out on the best gaming SSD, will be much more beneficial in terms of performance for most people.

However, if you’re a serial upgrader or overclocker who dabbles in high-end cooling, and you want a board that’s going to keep you happy for the next half a decade, or at least until AMD ditches Socket AM5, then you’re unlikely to ever find the ROG Crosshair X870E Hero wanting. However, the premium it demands would be much better spent elsewhere if your budget is even remotely limited.

If you’re looking to build a water-cooled PC based on this motherboard, make sure you also check out our guide to the best gaming CPU to find the best chip for your needs.