ASUS ROG Crosshair VIII Extreme Motherboard Overview
The ASUS ROG Crosshair VIII Extreme is one of the largest and heaviest motherboards that we’ve ever reviewed! It is an E-ATX board that is almost completely covered with heatsinks and has a black and silver design. This board really feels like a tank when you pick it up!
Starting at the CPU socket we of course have AMD’s AM4 socket. You will notice a small hole in the center of the CPU socket, this is to install a thermal probe if you wanted. Surrounding the CPU socket we have our power delivery components. This board makes use of a 20 (18+2) power phase design with each power stage rated for 90 amps, 45 amp MicroFine alloy chokes, and 10K premium capacitors. With 1620 amps of available power this is the most I’ve ever seen from an AMD board! The power delivery components are covered by two heavy duty heatsinks which are connected by a heatpipe.
The top corner of the board is brought together the heatsinks as well as a rear I/O cover which has the ROG logo (which will light up with RGB lighting) as well as a small Crosshair logo. Hiding above the heatsinks are two 8-pin EPS connectors, which are metal reinforced as well as a 4-pin fan header.
Moving across the top of the board there is waterblock sensor header, two more fan headers (CPU fan & optional CPU fan, and voltage checkpoints. You can monitor Vcore, DRAM, SOC, and PLL voltages using these. One thing about the fan headers, the CPU and chassis fan headers support up to 1A/12W. These headers also support ASUS HydraNode. HydraNode allows you to connect as many as three fans to one fan header using an off-the-shelf splitter, but unlike with older PWM headers, HydraNode still gives you full control and monitoring of each fan.
As we move over we find four reinforced DDR4 DIMM slots. These slots support up to 128GB of DDR4 with speeds up to 5000 MHz (Ryzen 5000 / 3000). These slots do not have the locks on the bottom, which makes it easier to remove memory without having to swap out your graphics card. Next to the DDR4 DIMM slots is the DIMM.2 slot, which looks almost identical to a memory slot, luckily ASUS has labeled it. For those wondering this slot gets its lanes from the chipset and the DIMM.2 module supports PCIe (Gen4) or SATA-based M.2 drives up to 110 mm.
Coming over to the edge of the board there is a plastic shroud what covers all of your buttons and other connections. There is POST code display, power button, and FlexKey button. For those who don’t know the FlexKey by default is set as your reset button, but can be remapped in the BIOS. The shroud also covers up a bunch of connections, all of which are at a 90-degree angle. You have a radiator fan header, water pump header, two 3-pin addressable RGB headers, 24-pin ATX power connection, optional 6-pin PCI-Express power connector for full power for the Thunderbolt ports, and a 4-pin fan header. The radiator fan headers on the board support 4A/48W, while the water pump headers support 3A/36W.
As we move down the board we find a USB 3.2 gen 2×2 header, two USB 3.2 gen 1 headers, and a USB 3.2 gen 2 header, and six SATA 6GB/s ports. The SATA ports and the USB 3.2 gen 1 ports are angled 90-degrees for easier cable management.
Along the bottom of the board we have slew of connections and buttons. From left to right we have your front panel audio headers, LN2 mode header, 4-pin standard RGB header, 3-pin addressable RGB header, two USB 2.0 headers, VLatch button, Slow Mode button, 2 reserved headers, reserved switch, safe boot, retry, and BIOS switch buttons, debug header, radiator fan header, water pump header, 2 water temperature headers, water flow header, and your front panel headers.
The bottom of the board is really characterized by all of the heatsinks which basically cover the entire thing. The top and bottom heatsinks have a mirror-link finish on them. The top heatsink actually features a 2-inch OLED display (which we will talk about in a bit), while the bottom one is a single piece of metal with an amazing finish, just be careful because it is a fingerprint magnet! As far as expansion slots go there are two PCI-Express 4.0 x16 slots (x16 & x8 electrical) and a single x1 slot. The two x16 slots are metal reinforced and for those wondering if you run two graphics cards they will operate at x8 speeds.
You can easily remove the heatsinks with the included screwdriver and the screws are captive so you don’t have to worry about losing them. With the heatsinks removed we reveal three M.2 slots. The top slot (M.2_1) runs off the CPU and supports PCIe 4.0 x4 as well as SATA-based M.2 drives up to 80 mm. The bottom two slots (M.2_2 & M.2_3) run in PCIe mode only and support 80 mm drives as well. If you populate M.2_3 the second PCI-Express slot will only run a x4 speeds and if you populate both M.2_2 and M.2_3 the second PCI-Express slot is disabled. There are heatsinks below the slots and those plus the main heatsinks have we just removed have thermal tape pre-applied. This board also features ASUS’s M.2 Q-Latch, which is a small latch that will lock your M.2 drive in place. No more looking for those tiny M.2 screws!
The rear I/O has an integrated shield, which is expected on a board like this. As far as buttons and connections on the rear I/O go from left to right we have a clear CMOS button, BIOS button, DisplayPort In, WiFi Antennas, another DisplayPort In, WiFi antennas, eight USB 3.2 gen 2 ports (Type-A), 10G Ethernet (Marvel Aqtion AQC113CS), 2.5G Ethernet (Intel I225-V), two Thunderbolt 4 Type-C ports, and your audio connections.
Flipping the board over we can see there is a metal backplate. This not only gives more stability to the board, but also helps with cooling components.
