ASUS - ROG CROSSHAIR X870E DARK HERO (Socket AM5) AMD X870E ATX DDR5 Wi-Fi 7 Motherboard - Black

I have always been a msi guy but let me tell you, This Asus Dark hero board is amazing. The build quality is really top notch. This is a board that can do pretty much anything. Installation was a breeze with zero issues and performance has been insane. Job very well done asus! Probably never go msi. I would absolutely recommend this board to anyone that is considering such an investment. This board is built like a tank, it has a full metal back and it looks great all the way around. Highly recommend this one!!

This board has all the bells and whistles, protective back and is just cool to look at! It is easy to install M.2, GPU. I/O has all the ports you need/want. I have no complaints and I'm happy I paid up for this board:)

The ROG Crosshair X870E Dark Hero will have everything you need and more on the AM5 platform. On top of that it has a really sleek design.

Works as expected, solid water that looks great and performs as well

I've been building PCs for a little over 25 years now. I have about 25 completed builds under my belt. Over the years, I've used motherboards from all the major manufacturers – even legacy brands that are no longer around like Abit, DFI, and ECS! Among all of the motherboard manufacturers I've used, ASUS has always been my favorite to work with. They also make the best looking boards in my opinion. With that said, it's been a little over six years since I've built a PC. My i9-9900KF and ASUS Maximus XI Formula motherboard badly needed an upgrade, so I figured the release of this beautiful flagship motherboard from ASUS was the perfect opportunity to see if ASUS still lives up to its name. To cut to the chase, it exceeded all of my expectations. This motherboard is a performance monster with an insane amount of expandability. For reference, I've listed all of the components below that I used for this build: CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D AIO: ASUS ROG Strix SLC IV 360 ARGB LCD GPU: MSI GeForce RTX 4090 SUPRIM Liquid X 24G RAM: KLEVV CRAS V DDR5 64GB 6000MHz CL30 Hynix Storage: WD Black SN8100 4TB NVMe SSD PCIe 5.0x4 PSU: Corsair HX 1200i SHIFT w/ ThermalProtect PCIe 5.1 600W 12V-2x6 Cable Case: HAVN BF 360 (Non-Flow Edition) Case Fans: Noctua NF-A14x25 G2 PWM Chromax x 2 (front intake and rear exhaust) The first thing I have to mention is the aesthetics of this board. This is the most gorgeous motherboard I've ever seen. As you can see by my pictures, I went for more of a stealth build this time around. If you're a bit jaded by the overdone fish tank builds with extravagant RGB light shows like I am, this Dark Hero motherboard lets you opt for more of an understated design language with much more purposeful accent lighting. Everything on this motherboard oozes top-tier construction quality and finish. I mean, the amount of detail and design work that went into manufacturing the backplate alone tells you how much effort went into producing this motherboard. Both the primary metal M.2 heatsink and the large aluminum M.2 heatsink/shroud that covers the secondary through fifth M.2 slots feel absurdly overbuilt. They have the kind of machining, weight, and finish you'd expect from CNC-milled components coming out of a boutique hardware shop! I love that the first four M.2 slots are outfitted with thermal pads to help keep the drives cool. Just bear in mind that the CPU family installed on the motherboard will dictate the speed capabilities of the first two M.2 slots. With my Ryzen 9 9950X3D, the first two M.2 slots run at PCIe 5.0 x4, while M.2_3 and M.2_4, which are connected through the chipset, run at PCIe 4.0 x4. The fifth M.2 slot runs at PCIe 4.0 x2. One important caveat I discovered is that the M.2_2 and the rear USB4 controller (i.e. both 40 Gbps USB-C ports) share bandwidth. With the M.2_2 populated, both the slot and the USB4 controller operate at up to x2 by default. You CAN change a BIOS setting so that the M.2_2 slot runs at the full x4 link width, but doing so disables both 40 Gbps USB-C ports. This is hardly an issue for me, since the board provides more M.2 slots than I would ever need. My WD Black SN8100 4TB NVMe drive was getting roughly 14.6 GB/s read speeds and 14.1 GB/s write speeds (see CrystalDiskMark screenshot). That is extremely close to the practical ceiling of a PCIe 5.0 x4 consumer NVMe drive! Even under a sustained CrystalDiskMark load, the SN8100 peaked at just 70°C before quickly settling back into the low-to-mid 50s, which is an impressive showing thanks to the gargantuan primary M.2 heatsink. Thanks to ASUS's massive 20+2+2 power stage VRM phase layout, my CPU has been rock solid under every heavy workload I've thrown at it so far. Twenty dedicated 110-amp VCORE stages provide an enormous amount of current delivery headroom while keeping voltage regulation stable under rapidly changing CPU loads. The dynamic boosting behavior on my Ryzen 9 9950X3D has also been phenomenal. Combined with the board's huge aluminum VRM heatsinks and the embedded heatpipe, the power-delivery components stayed cool and showed no signs of thermal throttling. This has allowed my 9950X3D to sustain very aggressive boost clocks under prolonged workloads without the motherboard's VRM ever becoming a limiting factor. One of my absolute favorite features of this motherboard is the new AIO Q-connector. Where has this been all my life?! When using a compatible AIO, all you need to do is slot the cooler's Q-connector into the motherboard's Q-Connector socket. I really enjoyed not having to connect seperate PWM and ARGB headers for things like the pump power, radiator fans, and lighting. At the time of writing this review, the Asus ROG Strix SLC IV 360 ARGB AIO used in my build has yet to be released in North America (but should be soon). I'm extremely fortunate to have a co-worker in the UK who was able to source one for me and bring it to the states while they were in town recently — just in time to test the new Q-connector feature for this build. The AIO is a perfect pairing with this motherboard, and I've had fantastic cooling results with zero issues from the new mechanism. I'm excited to see all of the upcoming AIOs that will be released with this new interface. After all these years of building with motherboards from various manufacturers, and now having built with this new Crosshair X870E Dark Hero, ASUS remains the gold standard in my book when it comes to UEFI BIOS. Navigating through the various menus on this motherboard's UEFI BIOS made it clear to me that the customization, overclocking, overvoltage, undervoltage, etc., are endless. The menus are also thoughtfully laid out making navigation very intuitive. Interestingly, my exact KLEVV CRAS V 64GB DDR5-6000 CL30 kit (KD5BGUA80-60A300G) does not appear on ASUS’s current memory QVL for the Dark Hero. While KLEVV is still somewhat unfamiliar to many PC builders, it is Essencore's enthusiast memory brand and has close ties to the broader SK Group ecosystem that includes SK hynix. That was actually one of the reasons I gravitated toward this kit, since SK hynix-based DDR5 has earned an excellent reputation on modern Ryzen platforms for strong timings, stability, and overclocking headroom (and the heat spreaders perfectly matched the Dark Hero's aesthetics!). I knew I was taking a bit of a gamble, but had full faith it wouldn't be an issue for this motherboard. Despite the kit not being on the QVL, enabling EXPO I was completely painless. The board retrained the memory without issue and correctly configured the kit at DDR5-6000 with its rated 30-36-36-76 timings. Stability has also been flawless throughout my testing so far, which speaks very highly of the Dark Hero’s memory compatibility and training behavior. Overall, the X870E Crosshair Dark Hero motherboard is a 10/10 for me. It is exactly the type of ultra-premium board I've come to expect at this tier. In my opinion, it's also the best-looking board currently on the market. Some other quick noteworthy highlights of this board that I'd like to praise are the ingenious GPU release button behind the PCIEX16_1 slot, which allows you to quickly release the graphics card instead of having to continuously bludgeon your thumb on a retention tab; how incredibly simple it was to flash the BIOS using EZ Flash; the flawless integrated Bluetooth adapter when pairing devices; the blazing-fast 10GB LAN port; the minimalist ROG logo with no text during boot-up; and lastly, the fun accessories included in the box, such as the bottle opener and ROG membership card with its surprise message. The thoughtful inclusions always go a long way with me. Well done, ASUS!