We took ASUS’ most advanced motherboard for AMD’s new AM5 socket for a spin. Meet the top end of the premium
The following product is mainly intended for those who want to know what ASUS’ most advanced motherboard looks like for the new AM5 bracket, and maybe even right now.
ASUS’s ROG or Republic of Gamers brand recently celebrated its 15th birthday and here on the site we remember the first products that carried the old logo at the time in Intel’s LGA775 socket, then the spread of the brand to other products such as video cards.
Ever since its birth, the ROG brand has had the most advanced gaming and overclocking motherboards available on the market, and it is safe to say that since then there is no brand that manages to get the same success and awareness in the market, even when the competition is not easy.
Even within the ROG brand itself there are different degrees of madness in the hardware engineering. While the lower half of the market receives the STRIX name, the upper half receives the ROG Crosshair branding, a brand designed exclusively for motherboards based on AMD mounts.
The Crosshair X670E Extreme is clearly the most advanced motherboard that ASUS has created for AMD processors, technologically and engineering wise. Its price tag? A little over NIS 4,500, which is about NIS 2,000 more than what an “average” advanced board usually gets, motherboards like the ROG STRIX X670E-E.
The motherboard standard is EATX. Its width is 30.5 centimeters and its height is 27.7 centimeters. Despite the large standard, it will fit in many gaming cases that only fit the ATX standard, but for this you need to know exactly how much space you have.
In modern motherboards, the array of interfaces for expansion cards is significantly different due to the hardware developments of recent years. If we are used to seeing 3-4 full-length PCI-Express interfaces, today there is not much use for gaming due to the death of SLI and CrossFireX, so a single interface is dedicated for a video card. The X670E Extreme has two additional interfaces designed for expansion cards such as a capture card or an SSD expansion card.
Sometimes we meet seemingly advanced motherboards whose connectivity is not considered particularly high quality, but here in the X670E Extreme we can say that the situation is very close to perfect. The back of the motherboard includes:
- Eight 10Gbps Type-A USB interfaces and one Type-C type
- A pair of USB 4 interfaces at a speed of 40Gbps Type-C
- 20Gbps Type-C USB interface
- RJ45 interface from a 2.5Gbps network card based on an Intel controller
- RJ45 interface from 10Gbps network card based Marvell AQtion controller
- Audio in 7.1 channels based on ALC4082 encoder made by Realtek
- Wireless network card for Bluetooth and WiFi 6E based on Intel
- BIOS boot button, BIOS cleanup button
Among dozens and maybe hundreds of motherboards we’ve seen in recent years, what’s happening here is very close to the perfect set of interfaces, and definitely the most advanced we’ve seen on a standard motherboard for processors. Finally a USB 4 interface supporting DisplayPort ports shows itself on the motherboard.
The only way it could be better is if by some miracle there were products to put in a tower of regular USB 2 interfaces, something that serves keyboards, mice and other peripherals that don’t need high traffic speed.
It is also possible to get an additional 10Gbps network card instead of the 2.5Gbps based one if you look at the future where 10Gbps fiber connection will become more common.
On the other side of the motherboard you can see that most of the interfaces that normally face upwards are now tilted at a 90 degree angle. This, in order to avoid as much as possible the same spaghetti effect created with bent cables that connect to the motherboard in the case.
From left to right – there are six SATA connections for hard drives, a fan connector, 5Gbps USB connectors for the case, an RGB light connector, a Type-C connector for cases that don’t have the same 90 degree angle yet, 6PIN and 24PIN connectors for the motherboard, a pair of fan connectors More and more connector for RGB lights.
These are the M.2 interface based on PCI-Express 5.0. They are under the cover that serves as a heatsink, unfortunately the cover is not separable and removing it will remove the heatsink from both at the same time. Docking is simple and does not require screws thanks to a spring mechanism that ensures that the drives stay in place.
The Gen-Z.2 is a unique trick that only ASUS has. No, this is not a product intended only for those born after 1996, but rather a memory slot-like interface designed for an expansion card for M.2 drives. This card carries heat sinks and is intended for the installation of another pair of M.2 drives, one of which comes in the PCI-Express 5.0 standard and one in the 4.0 standard.
The connectivity of the M.2 drives in the X670E Extreme is excellent, it’s actually the fastest we’ve encountered so far.
Want more? there’s more. Along with the X670E Extreme comes a wide card for the lower PCI-Express X4 5.0 interface designed for an additional M.2 drive. This card comes with its own decent heatsink.
The X670E Extreme is probably the heaviest motherboard we’ve come across in recent years, and this is one of the reasons why. The motherboard comes with a large aluminum chassis on the back which contributes to the heat dissipation from the back of the board. There is also a LED strip which you can see in the demo below.
This motherboard is designed, among other things, for extreme overclocking using tools such as dry ice and liquid nitrogen. As a result, it has a lot of switches related to overclocking and bug debugging. For example – Alternation Mode is responsible for changing between generation 4 and generation 3 of PCI-Express for the lower PCI-Express interface, since sometimes in overclocking, running in a previous generation helps stability.
During extreme overclocking a change of the base frequency is part of the story, sometimes by a few megahertz. Although the term BCLK is taken from Intel, the intention in the AMD platform is exactly the same. Using these buttons you can change the base frequency of the processor in real time according to the amount you set in advance in the bios. It could be 0.1MHz per click, it could be a whole megahertz.
Note that the X670E Extreme has a number of fan connectors scattered along the sides of the motherboard. The board actually has eight 4PIN controlled fan connectors. Thus, there is no real reason to unify fans from around the case, unless you have an external controller, one that comes with many cases.
In the past we have already touched on power supply systems for processors, and the fact that most of the new motherboards today with the AM5 mount can provide far more than what each processor needs, including overclocking.
The X670E Extreme takes the absurd to a new height with a power supply system that can also be enough for two Ryzen 9 7950X processors under extreme cooling. There is a system of 22 stages, of which 20 are intended exclusively for the processing cores in the processors, and they are set to a maximum current of 110A each. For clarity, 110A is already more than half of what the Ryzen 9 7950X will require. Technically, five such stages with efficient cooling can drive a Ryzen 9 7950X processor without any problem. Overclocking? Six or seven will deliver the goods. Here we have 20, so that you can go wild as much as you want, even without the heatsinks on them.
What you see here are reinforced power connectors for the processor bracket, two 8PIN type. Even before he forgot to go into the stabilizer from a voltage of 12V to the voltage that the processor needs, first it passes here. These connectors are very high quality and rated for a maximum current of 40A or a power of 480W each. On the left you can see a unique connector designed for water cooling blocks. Sometimes ASUS collaborates with water cooling manufacturers to allow blocks made for specific models of motherboards, and the X670E Extreme is one such.
Just above the memory interfaces are our voltage test points. Using a multimeter, a user can know in real time the voltages of the processor controllers. This is a necessary tool for overclocking for a large number of overclockers, and also an excellent way to measure voltage fluctuations in the connection of an oscilloscope.
There is also a tool for the users who don’t do overclocking and honestly this is one of our favorite features on new motherboards lately. This button is connected to a tongue that holds video cards in the PCI-Express interface. Instead of accessing the interface in an inconvenient way, all you have to do is press any button and the video card is released. Simple, effective, efficient.
There is a good chance that whoever buys this motherboard will almost completely recognize the BIOS interface, as ASUS has stuck with the same interface for many years, only including small changes in each generation. The BIOS of ASUS is excellent, you get used to it easily, it responds well and contains above and beyond every option requested by every level of users.
Even if you use ASUS motherboards that are 5 years old or older, you will be familiar with the ASUS interface and arrangement in this BIOS.
Options for adjusting the voltage to the processor, and setting the EXPO profile to the memory with the main uses for the advanced user, but this motherboard also includes tools for extreme overclocking using liquid nitrogen, such as opening an extreme operating voltage of 1.7V and more to the processing cores, a delay mode in which the processor can work at extremely low frequencies on In order to get stability, and frequency changes of any variety of components inside the processor.
Of course, it is impossible not to mention the RGB lights and the various displays that you get on this motherboard, in our case also in combination with the Ryujin 360 II water cooling, which are all controlled through the Armory Crate, ASUS’ control software for a variety of connected equipment.
Aesthetically, the X670E Crosshair Extreme is probably the most interesting motherboard we’ve come across from ASUS in recent years. The lights behind the mirrors get an unusual animation, and are very bright so you can easily see them even through darkened side windows.
Tests, compensation and summary
As we mentioned in the PCB analysis, the ROG Crosshair X670E Extreme is several steps beyond “just” overclocking, even extreme overclocking. ASUS set out on a mission to build the most advanced motherboard it could, with an open check and no compromises, and that’s exactly what it did with this motherboard.
We ran the Ryzen 9 7950X for the sport at continuous effort for three hours and the highest regulator temperature we encountered was 58°C at its hottest point with an ambient temperature of 27°C.
The heatsinks on the stabilizers in the Crosshair X670E Extreme are purely cosmetic at this point simply because the heat dissipation between so many efficient stabilizers is so effective. To clear your head, such voltage stabilizers can work 24 hours a day at a temperature of 80 degrees and more for years, that’s how they are built.
The initial boot with the processor and the memory kit took about 30 seconds and since then we haven’t waited that long for any other boot. In the case of the AM5 mount, sometimes the initial boot can take a minute or more.
If we talk about value, there is no choice but to point out that the ROG Crosshair X670E Extreme is not built to be affordable, it is not at all a priority of the engineering team behind such a motherboard.
There are two very clear target audiences for such a motherboard – crazy talkers or professional overclockers who get to use this motherboard under the auspices or through funding of one or another organization or company. just like that.
ASUS doesn’t manufacture tens of thousands of motherboards like the Crosshair X670E Extreme and distribute worldwide, and you’ll usually find a few units at local distributors, if at all. Arguably, some of this is happening thanks to the state of the chips in the world, but if there is a user who wants the new Extreme, ASUS at the local level will know about it.
Although it is a motherboard built on pure overclocking, the excellent connectivity of the Crosshair X670E Extreme cannot be ignored. There is USB 4.0, there are plenty of additional fast USB ports, excellent M.2 interfacing and exceptional visuals. We must not forget the pair of network cards that you receive, where one of them has a speed of 10Gbps and is useful for products such as a storage server, NAS.
Is this the best AM5 board made yet? It’s safe to say yes, perhaps simply because ASUS was the first to come out with the heavy guns at launch, and its competitors are still moving cautiously towards the launch of crazy flagships. We don’t like bombastic announcements, and certainly not before we give them a respectable and long-term road test.
As of now, the ROG Crosshair X670E Extreme is the most advanced and richest motherboard we’ve seen for the AM5 mount, and rich will be those who want to purchase one with a price tag of over NIS 4,500. Not worth it, yes very much is very advanced.
Later you will see additional motherboards made by ASUS, significantly cheaper, and a reference to the overclocking tools and the ease of using them for ordinary users. Worth staying updated!