ASUS Prime X470-PRO Motherboard Review

ASUS Prime X470-PRO Overview
ASUS is pretty much keeping the same color design as we’ve seen on previous Prime motherboards. So we have a black PCB with silver and white accents. As you can see the heatsinks on the board are silver and the I/O cover is white. There are some RGBs mixed in there as well, which we will show you a little later in this review.

ASUS Prime X470-PRO Motherboard

Starting at the CPU socket we of course have AMD’s AM4 socket, which does support both 1st and 2nd generation Ryzen CPUs as well as APUs. From the looks of it we have a 10 phase VRM. ASUS has redesigned the VRM heatsinks on this board, they are larger and overall look better. At the top of the board between the two heatsinks you’ll find your 8-pin EPS connector. Another nice addition to this board that was not on the X370 version of this board is an I/O cover.

ASUS Prime X470-PRO Motherboard ASUS Prime X470-PRO Motherboard

As we move over to the edge of the board you’ll see the four DDR4 DIMM slots, which are color-coded for dual channel operation. While these are not metal reinforced they do not have the locks on the bottom edge so you can remove your memory even with a graphics card installed. This board officially supports up to 64GB of DDR4-3466 memory. Right above these you’ll find your CPU Fan and CPU OPT Fan headers. Along the far edge of the board is a 4-pin fan header, 24-pin ATX power connection, and a internal USB 3.1 Gen 2 header.

ASUS Prime X470-PRO Motherboard

Moving down the board there are six SATA 6GB/s ports, which are at a 90-degree angle. All six of these ports are powered by the X470 chipset and support RAID 0, 1, and 10.

ASUS Prime X470-PRO Motherboard

Along the bottom edge of the board is where you are going to find the rest of your headers. From left to right you have an HD Audio header, COM port header, TPM header, two USB 2.0 headers, USB 3.1 Gen 1 header, 4-pin RGB header, two 4-pin fan headers, and your front panel headers. There is also a clear CMOS jumper up on the board a little bit.

ASUS Prime X470-PRO Motherboard

The audio solution that ASUS is using on this board is the Realtek S1220A. Also also is using their Crystal Sound 3 which gives you audio shielding, a separate layer for left and right tracks, an integrated amplifier, and premium Japanese-made audio capacitors.

ASUS Prime X470-PRO Motherboard

As far as expansion slots go you have three PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slots and three PCi-Express 3.0 x1 slots. The top two x16 slots are metal reinforced. For those using Ryzen desktop processors the first slot will run at x16 speeds with a single card and with two cards the two slots will run at x8 speeds.

ASUS Prime X470-PRO Motherboard

The bottom-most M.2 slot is found between the bottom two PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slots. This M.2 slot is powered by the X470 chipset and supports SATA & PCIE 3.0 x 2 modes.

ASUS Prime X470-PRO Motherboard

Above the top PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slot is the second M.2 slot. It is covered by an M.2 cooler that is designed to look like it is connected to the bottom heatsink and I/O cover. I actually like this design and it ties the entire board together quite well. This heatsink is easily removed so you can install your M.2 solid state drive. This slot is the PCIe x4 slot so if you are installing an NVMe drive you are going to want to do it here. Right above this heatsink there are a few headers which include an AIO Pump header, 4-pin fan header, and 4-pin RGB header. The AiO pump header is great if your AiO cooler does not have control software.

ASUS Prime X470-PRO Motherboard ASUS Prime X470-PRO Motherboard

Finally we have the rear I/O. From left to right you have a combo PS/2 port, two USB 2.0 ports, DisplayPort, HDMI, two USB 3.1 gen 1 (Type-A, Type-C), two USB 3.1 Gen 2 ports, 2 more USB 3.1 Gen 1 ports, Ethernet (Intel I211-AT), and your audio connections.

ASUS Prime X470-PRO Motherboard

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