Customer Ratings & Reviews

Bought this board about 2 weeks ago and couldn’t be happier

Awesome, powerful, motherboard by Asus. Great performance

Every so often a motherboard crosses my bench that clearly wasn't built to hit a price target. This is one of them. It sits in that awkward space just below ASUS's true flagship AM5 boards, and it reads like a spec sheet designed to make you forget the cheaper options exist. AM5 socket, room for the current Ryzen chips, five M.2 slots, dual USB4, WiFi 7, and a power stage setup that's frankly more than most people will ever lean on. If you're putting together a high-end build and want a board that won't be the thing holding you back, it belongs on your shortlist. Where it earned its keep in my testing was the actual building process. Heatsinks are heavy, and the whole board feels dense in a way cheaper models don't. But the real wins are the small conveniences. Tool-free M.2 mounts, so you're not chasing tiny screws across the desk. A push-button release for the graphics card, which anyone who's fished a finger under a giant GPU to reach the latch will appreciate. Onboard power button for bench testing. And a code display that flags where a boot hangs instead of leaving you guessing. There's even a cable-free connector for compatible ASUS liquid coolers that folds several runs into one block. Little stuff. But it adds up. BIOS is one of the better ones I've used in a while. ASUS added a middle tier between the simple and advanced menus, so you can reach the settings most people actually touch, memory profiles, fan curves, power tuning, without wading through the rest. Loading an EXPO memory profile took a couple of clicks. You also get a WiFi driver kept on board, so you're not hunting for network access on a fresh Windows install. Armoury Crate, the companion software, is still heavier than it needs to be. I'd love a version that let me install only the pieces I want. Worth knowing you can hand RGB control to Windows itself and skip a good chunk of it if you'd rather. On raw performance there's not much drama, which is exactly what you want. I ran it with a power-hungry chip and the power delivery stayed composed, temperatures well in check. That primary M.2 heatsink is one of the chunkiest I've come across and keeps a Gen 5 drive happy. Connectivity is where it flexes hardest. You get a wall of fast USB on the back, two of them the 40Gbps USB4 type that also push video out, so docks and quick external drives are covered. WiFi 7 has been quick and stable in my time with it. Wired networking caps at 5 gigabit, which is plenty for almost everyone, though at this tier a 10-gigabit port wouldn't have felt out of place. Now the fine print, because there's some. Those five M.2 slots come with strings attached. Depending on which ones you populate, you can end up splitting bandwidth with the USB4 ports or knocking out the second expansion slot entirely. If you plan to load it with drives, read the sharing table in the manual before you buy, because five slots doesn't mean five slots running full speed at once. Fan headers also don't push much current, so if you're running several high-power fans off one header you'll want to spread the load or add a hub. Neither is a dealbreaker. Both are the kind of thing you'd rather know going in. So who is this really for? Much of what you're paying for is polish and headroom, not more frames per second. A cheaper board will game just as well. What you get here is a smoother build, cooler drives, a sharper BIOS, and connectivity you won't outgrow for years. If you're building a high-end AM5 machine and you care about the building experience and connectivity you won't outgrow, it's easy to recommend. If you just want your parts to work and don't care about the extras, you can spend less and not miss much.

Okay, Asus you're making a strong statement with your hardware lately. This is easily one of the best looking motherboards I have seen in a while. Did someone order too many USB ports for motherboards over there at Asus? Goodness gracious there are a ton of them on this board. Which I do like. I am not complaining. This is replacing my trusty desktop with a Ryzen 3600 in it with 64Gb of DDR4 ram (rig was built a long time ago before AI made the price of building a new rig ridiculous) If you have been building with Asus boards you will ne familiar with the UEFI. A little hint, that port on the back that you might think is telling you its a Thunderbolt port is just for charging. FYI just in case you are one of those folks who don't read manuals.😉 The two USB4 which can handle DP 1.4 are a very nice touch making me upgrade some of my peripherals. The heatsinks are just huge. There are a lot of little things they did with this board that I really appreciate, like the plastic covers for the fan headers next to the ram. Having Wi-Fi 7 so I am upgrade ready when the time comes. The PCI-E slot release should be standard on all motherboards as far as I am concerned. If you are trying to upgrade and can get all the parts you need I would recommend giving this board a shot.

Upgrade to this board or get this board if you're looking for the maximum expansion capabilities with the top features that ASUS offers on motherboards. First, is the onboard NVME storage.. there are five M.2 slots and to of them support the highest speed NVME drives (PCIe 5.0) and the rest support 4.0 which is still fast. The thing I love most is that even if you fill up all the NVME slots, you won't steal bandwidth from your graphics card, so if you are a gamer who has a huge gaming library like I do and have multiple SSDs (some as mirrors and some as storage drives, and then some for video/content creation) then this board is for you. Performance wise, this board has everything you need to overclock and tweak settings to squeeze every frame out of it that you can. In terms of configuration, it has a simple BIOS configuration menu and supports advanced feature sets that let you tweak and customize settings to fine tune performance to your specific CPU and RAM. So far, I haven't had any memory training issues and performance has been solid with stock settings for my 9900X3D and DDR5 6000. What I like most is that this board is tool-less and has tons of rear and onboard I/O connectivity and has RGB headers in addition to a really cool and unique RGB lighting effect on the rear I/O cover. It's really packed with serious hardware including good sound, 5gig networking and wifi of course. If you have a board that has limited USB ports or headers and you're looking for more, this board has it all. If you have an older generation board, I'd definitely recommend starting with a board like this, you'll be set for top performance for a few years and have no trouble upgrading components along the way. So far, I've not encountered any issues and have found this board to be a solid performer all around. I'd definitely recommend it and if you're a serious gamer or even a content creator, this board will not disappoint based on my experience so far.

First thing I did out of the box was update the BIOS due to some complaints that early adopters had with this board. I think because of said update I had minimal issues - definitely none of the road bumps that many of them reported. The board is standard ATX format, giving you plenty of room for expansion - especially with NVME slots. NOTE: If you max out the NVME slots, you're going to sacrifice GPU PCI-E speeds. The board has more than enough USB slots , that's for sure. I personally can't see myself maxing out all of these ports. The graphic display over the VRMs is beautiful - when used in combination with ARGB lighting in your case you really can create a visual work of art! Memory speeds that are supported are up to 8000 MT/second - that's some serious high-speed transfers there! Have WiFi 7? You'll be able to take full advantage of it with this board - no add-ons, just attach the included WiFi antennas and you're ready to go. In the past I've been nervous about using the Armoury Crate software that ASUS gives, but it's really matured over the years. From my testing I've found that even the faint of heart can use it and not experience any real issues with it. All in all a fantastic board experience! The PC I built on it screams high-speed low-drag and with AM5 being supported for several more years it's nice to know that it has upgradability built right into it. A solid choice for sure!

The ASUS ROG Strix X870E-E Neo is a premium motherboard that lives up to the hype. I have always been partial to ASUS motherboards because I just felt they have been the most builder-friendly especially when I was just starting out. This board carries on that legacy. First off, it just looks so pretty and clean. Build quality is premium. Everything just feels sturdy. Setup and install is unbelievably quick and easy with so many tool-free mounts and connections. Building with this was smooth which is definitely not the norm with me. There are five M.2 slots of which two support PCIe 5.0. You have USB ports for days. You can't really expect any more with connectivity with WiFi 7, Ethernet. The BIOS was excellent and easy to navigate. What is more important to me is that it is a 64MB BIOS meaning that there is more than enough room for supporting future processors which is another reason why it demands its price. Performance is butter so far and I have not had any issues. All in all, ASUS ROG Strix X870E-E Neo is not a cheap motherboard but you get what you pay for with excellent aesthetics, future-proof engineering, build quality, and convenience.

In short, the Asus ROG Strix x870e Max Neo feels like the X870E board I wanted when I originally chose B850 a year ago. It gives me USB4 without sacrificing PCIe 5 GPU support or compromising my SSD configuration, which was the main reason I avoided X870E boards last year. After two weeks of daily use, gaming, work, browsing, and YouTube, it has been just as stable as my previous board. I was using a B850 based PC for over a year. It had a 9800X3D, 2 × 32 GB DDR5 CL30 6000 RAM, a T710 PCIe 5 SSD, a Samsung 990 Pro PCIe 4 SSD, and a 6950 XT. I have moved the same hardware to this board. When I was researching motherboards last year, I found that: PCIe 5 lanes are dictated by the CPU. AMD enforces USB4 on X870E based motherboards. Some PCIe 5 lanes get used by the USB4 implementation, which means something else has to give up those lanes. At the time, most boards were reducing the lanes available to either the GPU or the primary M.2 slot. X870E boards were also far more expensive than B850 boards, and I did not like the compromise despite paying more. So I stuck with a B850 board, which gave me a PCIe 5 GPU and two PCIe 5 M.2 slots. This new ROG Strix Neo board does a much better job with the lane allocation. It allows me to have a PCIe 5 GPU, one PCIe 5 SSD, USB4, and two PCIe 4 SSDs without sharing any bandwidth. Do note that M2 Slots 2,3 share bandwidth with USB4 and 2nd PCI Slot. Also note that the X870E chipset is connected to the CPU over four PCIe 4 lanes. As a result, devices connected through the chipset, such as WiFi and the bottom two M.2 slots, share that uplink bandwidth when used simultaneously. This is true for virtually every consumer motherboard and is not specific to this one. Hardware wise, this is a 10/10, well, almost. At this price, I was hoping there would be one or two fan headers capable of supplying more than 1 A, but all headers are limited to 1 A. I have some spare Super Flower MegaCool fans that I was planning to use. I can connect them to separate headers and power them through SATA, so nothing is really lost, but it would have been nice to have the option at this price point. It has three ARGB headers, and it also comes with a RAM fan. I have not installed it yet because my RAM temperatures are fine. Also, considering it sits at the top of the motherboard where the AIO exhaust is, it would mostly be pulling hot air from the radiator and blowing it back onto the RAM. There are plenty of USB ports on the rear I/O, and there are more internal connectors than usual. It has two USB 3 headers and two USB C 20 Gbps headers on the board. It has Wifi7 with 320 bands. The WiFi antenna works well, but I do not like the connectors. They are neither magnetic nor screw on, so it may not be easy to use an aftermarket antenna. The SSD heatsinks are excellent and come with pre-installed thermal pads. Initially, I thought the included support pad was only there to prevent the SSD from bending, so I did not install it. Without the pad, my PCIe 5 T710 drive in the M1 slot ran at about the same temperature as it did with the lighter heatsinks on my B850 board, around 73°C. After installing the support pad, temperatures dropped by around 15 to 17°C. Over the rear I/O area there is a large VRM heatsink with some ARGB lighting. Unfortunately, the overall design has not changed much, though a redesign would have looked cooler. There is a dedicated power button on the motherboard, along with a smaller button that defaults to Reset but can be configured for other functions. There is also a debug LED that displays CPU temperature after POST. Audio It offers a better audio solution with a Savitech amplifier on top of the ALC4080, and it could drive my Sundara (37 Ω) easily at loud enough levels for me. It also supports LHDC, although I have not tested that yet. The accompanying Realtek app detects headphone impedance, and it correctly identified both of my headphones. The sound is clean with no distortion, and there are different amplification levels, which I believe are equivalent to gain settings on my dedicated headphone amps. I think the software which comes on the board has some small negatives but is overall very stable and have nice positive points too. The BIOS complains about a missing keyboard and slows down the boot process. I use a dual machine setup with a USB switch, and sometimes the switch is connected to the second machine during boot. The BIOS does not like that. There is an option to continue when this happens, but there is no option to disable the warning entirely. Easy Mode includes most of the settings people will need. Advanced Mode is a bit convoluted, as it is on most recent AMD boards I have used. Fortunately, Google usually points you to the right menu item. I skipped Armoury Crate because it is generally considered quite heavy and used ASUS MB Manager instead. I noticed that MB Manager does not have an option to start with Windows. However, fan control continues to work even when the application is not running, which suggests ASUS uses a background service to manage it. It does take a while to load, and it does not control the ARGB lighting. I enabled Dynamic Lighting in the BIOS, and Windows is able to control the lighting directly from Settings. I think it would be perfect if ASUS adds ARGB support in a future revision. The fan control is excellent. You can create the usual fan curves based on several sensors, but where it really shines is that it allows each chassis fan to be controlled by up to three sensors. It can even read GPU temperature, even though my GPU is not made by ASUS. I configured mine to monitor GPU, M.2, and CPU temperatures. The fan speed increases based on whichever of those components is currently the hottest. If you have read this far, I'll end with this: it is an expensive board at its retail price, but it is a well-engineered board that tries to give you everything it can without making the compromises that many X870E boards do.

I've built PCs for years, and after handling quite a few motherboards across different price points, it's pretty easy to tell which ones are designed to hit a budget and which ones are designed simply to be the best they can be. The ROG Strix X870-E definitely falls into that second category, and one of my first experiences with a board like this. From the moment I took it out of the box, everything about it felt premium. The heatsinks are substantial without being excessive, the matte black finish looks fantastic in a clean build, and ASUS managed to add RGB in a way that enhances the board instead of making it look like a toy. Even with the lighting turned completely off, it still looks like a flagship motherboard. I will say the heatsinks for the M.2 slots will be divisive, and I can see if you’d not be interested in those parts of the motherboard at all (“For those who dare” can be seen when both shrouds are attached). That said, the actual build experience ended up being my favorite part. ASUS has clearly spent a lot of time refining all of the little things that most people don't think about until they're assembling a system. The tool-less M.2 installation is incredibly convenient, PCIe Q-Release makes removing a graphics card so much easier than the old latch style, and the BIOS continues to be one of the easiest to navigate and tune. Nothing about the process felt frustrating, which isn't something I can say about every motherboard I've used. Performance has been exactly what I'd hoped for. Memory training was painless, DDR5 EXPO worked without any headaches, and overall system stability has been excellent even after running through MemTest, etc. Power delivery is complete overkill for most people (18+2+2-phase VRM), but that's honestly part of the appeal. One area I didn't expect to appreciate as much as I do is the connectivity. Having USB4 built in is surprisingly useful, WiFi 7 is nice to have for the future, and there are enough high-speed USB ports that I haven't had to think twice about what I'm plugging in. Between the storage options, PCIe 5.0 support, and overall expandability, it feels like a motherboard I'll be able to keep through multiple CPU upgrades instead of replacing every generation. Visually, this board looks fantastic inside a case. The RGB is subtle and clean, not overwhelming, and the lighting around the I/O shroud and chipset gives the system just enough personality without becoming distracting. ASUS also did a great job hiding most of the PCB, giving the entire build a much cleaner appearance once everything is installed. The biggest downside is pretty obvious: the price. There are less expensive AM5 boards that will deliver essentially the same gaming performance if you're simply pairing them with a Ryzen 7 and an RTX or Radeon GPU. You're paying for the premium build quality, extra connectivity, better features, future proofing, and an overall nicer ownership experience rather than additional FPS. At the end of the day, though, that's exactly what this motherboard is supposed to be. It's not trying to be the best value option on the market. It's trying to be one of the nicest AM5 motherboards you can buy, and I honestly think ASUS nailed it. If you're already investing in a high-end Ryzen build and want a board that feels like it'll last through several upgrade cycles, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it. The ROG Strix X870-E Gaming WiFi 7 is one of those components that quietly makes the entire PC building experience better. It performs exactly as you'd expect from a flagship board, looks fantastic in a completed build, and includes enough thoughtful features that you continue to appreciate them long after the system is finished. Yes, it's expensive, but it's also one of the few premium motherboards that genuinely feels worth the premium, if you require the features or simply want the best.

GOOD - Premium board construction - Convenient DIY features -- On-board power and reset buttons -- Toolless quick latches for cards and NVMe drives - Excellent CPU and RAM overclocking support - Lots of storage options ( 5 M.2 NVMe slots, 4 SATA ports ) - Tons of USB, both back- and front-panel BAD - The NVMe and USB4 connectors share bandwidth and can't be used simultaneously - Adding the shared connections makes the board much more expensive without adding meaningful features - Only one USB type-A port connected directly to CPU ( for lower latency on keyboards and other peripherals ) - None of the M.2 slots can fit a 22110-length drive ( admittedly, those aren't widely used ) TLDR The Strix X870E-E Neo is the kind of motherboard made specifically to look good for advertising and bragging, but not so much for real-world consumer needs. Listing five NVMe slots and 25 USB ports on the box looks nice. But reading the fine print you see the compromises made to get all those on the board and the bottlenecking that will happen if trying to use them all. Adding the extra parts and circuitry to have those extra connections, whether or not you can realistically use them, greatly increases the price of the board. Unless you absolutely need all the M.2 slots ( and you KNOW the limitations of the PCIe lane splitting here ), a premium X870 non-E board will deliver everything you need and save you a couple hundred in the process. DETAILS First, let's go over the god things of the board. My primary complaints are due to the prohibitively high cost of the board due to unnecessarily complex circuitry and storage connections and shared bandwidth, but I'll explain them later. As with most Asus ROG products, the board quality is excellent. The CPU has an overkill power management system that can support exceptionally high overclocks. All over the board are small creature comforts that make it much easier to DIY system builder. The M.2 storage slots all use toolless quick connections, both to remove the heatsinks and mount the drives into the slots. The main card slot has a remote disconnect button that makes it easy to remove a GPU without needing to fish under the backplate for the latch. Onboard power and reset buttons make it easy to troubleshoot or stress test the board outside the case or on a test bench. The back has 13 USB ports for more peripherals than you're ever likely to use. Two are 40 Gbps ports while all others are 10 Gbps. Unfortunately, only one of the rear type-A ports connects directly to the CPU; all others are through the motherboard chipset. Routing your keyboard and mouse through chipset adds a tiny bit of input lag, which high-end gamers take seriously. Lots of USB and fan headers are available on the board ( though sadly no fan headers are on the front edge of the board ). Going on with the overkill, a 5G Ethernet controller is available, as well as Wi-Fi 7. While relatively few people will actually realize those networking speeds, it's a premium board and their addition over a more typical 2.5G Ethernet and Wi-Fi 6 doesn't increase the cost much. Though X870E boards can support up to eight SATA ports, only four are offered here. Still with so many boards only sporting two, it's still an improvement for people that still use optical and spindle drives in their systems. Now on to the bad/frustrating. The X870E chipset, with its extra connectivity lanes over the X870 non-E, may look nicer on paper. But most consumers don't understand how the two chipsets operate or why the regular non-E chipset is often the better choice for consumers. At the risk of getting too nerdy, I can't properly explain the drawbacks of this board without explaining how the chipset and CPU are connected. On the AM5 platform, the main 16-lane PCIe expansion slot ( usually a graphics card ) and main NVMe slot connect directly to the CPU, not the chipset. This takes 20 of the CPU's 28 available PCIe 5.0 lanes ( four are reserved specifically to connect to the motherboard chipset ). The other four can be used for an additional NVMe drive or high-bandwidth USB ports. The CPU also has four 10 Gbps USB connections. The X870 non-E chipset itself has 12 available PCIe 4.0 lanes. Four are reserved to connect to the CPU and then other eight are usually for storage or a second PCIe expansion slot. It can have up to four PCIe 3.0 lanes and six 10 Gbps USB connections, depending how the board uses those connection lanes for the integrated peripherals ( the built-in networking and audio components can use either USB or PCIe lanes ). The X870E chipset is simply two X870 chips working together. This doubles the number of USB and PCIe 3.0 lanes available to the motherboard, but PCIe 4.0 lanes only increase from 8 to 12 because four of those lanes from the first chip have to be used to connect down to the second chip. As every bit of data and instruction has to pass through the CPU, this means everything connected through the motherboard chipset ( and not directly to the CPU ) has to pass through the 4.0 x4 link between the chipset and CPU which can only handle 32 Gbps maximum. With the X870E, anything connected to the secondary chipset has to first pass to the primary chipset and then to the CPU. You can see the risk of bottlenecking your storage performance. On top of this, the Strix motherboard also splits the connection lanes so multiple ports share the same bandwidth, meaning overall bandwidth to each may be halved if both connections are used, or one will simply be disabled. However, none of this is new and and motherboards have been dealing with these limitations for years. On the Strix X870E-E, some of the sharing is less than ideal, in my opinion, with regard to the five M.2 slots. The main M.2 and expansion card slot are wisely untouched and they never share lanes with anything else ( splitting the 16 lanes from the GPU slot to another M.2 slot is common with less-expensive boards ). However the second M.2 slot shares lanes with the two 40 Gbps USB type-C ports on the back panel. This means if you use a second NVMe drive and connect it in this M.2 slot, the two USB ports and the M.2 connection will both be halved. A setting in then BIOS allows you to disable the two USB ports and instead have the M.2 slot run at full 5.0 x4 bandwidth. If you have two PCIe 5.0 drives, this does enable them to share data at maximum speed ( they're both connected to the CPU and won't be throttled by the chipset bottleneck ), but it does mean you lose all your USB4 ports. The remaining three M.2 slots all connect through the motherboard chipset and one of them shares bandwidth with the other PCIe card slot. This type of sharing is quite common, and really, not a big deal since few people use a second expansion card. So, why do I think the bandwidth sharing is a big deal? Because it just jacks up the price of the board without delivering many tangible benefits. Every connector, slot, and port added to the board, lane splitting and muxing circuitry, more traces on the PCB, they all make the board more expensive. Even if you mounted five NVMe drives ( which practically no one does ) you can only use up to three of them simultaneously without throttling. A single 4.0x4 drive can saturate the motherboard's link to the CPU, especially when you include network, audio, and USB traffic. And doing so also means you sacrifice your USB4 ports. If Asus had dropped one or two M.2 slots, things get much simpler. You still have one main drive connected to the CPU and two more connected through the chipset, all with no lane sharing. Yes, copying files from the main 5.0x4 drive to the secondary 4.0x4 drives would be slower than two 5.0x4 drives directly connected to the CPU. But you won't notice the speed difference in daily use unless you're regularly moving hundreds of gigabytes of data around. And you still have two USB4 ports to use. Knocking the extra connections off also means you can use a single motherboard chiplet instead of two. As relatively few people even use three NVMe drives, let alone five, the only thing lost is bragging rights that your motherboard can support five NVMe drives. But the simpler board layout means a much lower cost as well. And that's why I say the vast majority of gamers, streamers, and power-users will find much better value in a regular X870 board than an E model. This is a well-built board that has a lot of features and functions, no doubt. But for $600 ( as of this writing ), it's prohibitively expensive for a lot of people. Normally, top-shelf products are hard to quantify in terms of value because they already go above and beyond what most people strictly need. But I think this board goes well beyond some extra features which are "nice to have" and is firmly in the "exactly WHO really needs all this?" territory. Unless you REALLY need all those M.2 slots, chances are you can have all your needs met with a motherboard costing significantly less.

The ASUS ROG Strix X870-E Neo motherboard falls into the high-end gaming system boards and utilizes the latest generation available to maximize gaming performance. The board officially supports AMD 7-9K series processors via AM Socket Design 5 using ATX architecture to minimize its size. This board support DDR5 RAM for a max of 256GB (across 4 DIMM slots) gaming high speed RAM. The board includes the latest Wi-Fi 7 option (backwards compatible) and includes an external antenna array to position your antennas for best performance. For a wired connection, there is an onboard ethernet port; Realtek 5Gb. There are 2 5.0 PCIe slots and 5 onboard M.2 slots. The heatsinks for the M.2s are easily installed and removed allowing for easy upgrades and swaps as needed. There are around 13 various USB port options to take advantage of, to which 4 are USB-C at 10GBps. This board is liquid cooler ready as an option and uses an all-in-one connector design to simplify the cooler installation. These options enable specialized over-clocking of the board to tune the board to your needs. During bench and break-in testing, there were no noticeable performance slowdowns, and seemed to run fairly cool in the Cooler Master case used. Included in the box us the manual, case and board stickers, the M.2 tools and covers, the backplate. For direct RGB lighting a fan control, utilize Armoury Crate. Armoury Crate is the main board interface software that allows you to manage overall system performance, drivers, and utilities for the board without having the need to make changes directly through the BIOS each time via the operating system. There was an out-of-the-box initial BIOS update that had to be performed during build setup that went fairly quick. At this point, this is one of the top system boards to set yourself up for a long-term solution to last you for at least the next 2-3 years depending on how fast you outgrow your build from upgrades.

Not even sure where to start. First off, this board is heavy duty. This motherboard has features I didn't even know I wanted or needed. Starting with the specs, this is designed for an AMD AM5 processor. I opted for a Ryzen 9 9950X which will take advantage of the DDR5 memory and the five M.2 slots. Yes 5!!! It does have connections for 4 SATA drives but I've moved on from those. Two 40Gbps USB4 ports and 11 10Gbps USB ports so there is plenty of room to connect peripherals. There is 5Gb ethernet and WiFi 7 so getting connected isn't an issue. As for installing and building, this is another area this board shines. Installing the NVMe drives was as simple as pushing a button to release the cover, insert the drive, it clicks and then close the cover. The "Q Release" system is a time saver and really smart! Installing three drives took less than a minute! As for the rest of the build, there are plenty of connections for cooling fans (5 if I recall) or liquid cooling, depending on your preference. One REALLY convenient feature is the pushbutton release for the PCIe 5.0 slot. Given the size of many video cards it can be difficult to push the release once it's installed. Not a problem here, the button is positioned so it is easy to release and remove a video card regardless of its size. Finally on the performance front, this board screams. The board definitely is not a bottleneck. Running a Ryzen 9 with storage handled by a pair of SanDisk 2TB Optimus GX PRO 850X NVMe drives and 32Gb DDR5 6000 memory. Historically I have not opted for the higher-end motherboard but I can say this one has changed my mind. No regrets at all!