Crosshair is the brand that kicked off ASUS’ coveted Republic of Gamers (ROG) series. The NVIDIA nForce chipset based ROG Crosshair socket AM2 motherboard was the board to have, in AMD’s hayday as the leader in CPU performance. Over the years, the Crosshair brand received lesser love from ASUS, as AMD’s chipset releases became infrequent, due to the company’s slower CPU product development cycle than Intel. With the new socket AM4 platform and its companion AMD X370 chipset for the high-end segment, ASUS is back with a Crosshair branded motherboard, the ROG Crosshair VI Hero. It’s interesting that ASUS chose not to give it the “Formula,” “Extreme” or “Apex” extensions, and instead with the “Hero” extension it reserves for the $200-230 ROG branded boards.
Nevertheless, the ROG Crosshair VI Hero looks to be one of the most elaborately designed socket AM4 motherboards, and will compete with the likes of the Aorus AX370 Gaming 5 and the MSI X370 XPower Gaming Titanium. Built in the ATX form-factor, the Crosshair VI Hero draws power from a combination of 24-pin ATX, 8-pin EPS, and 4-pin ATX power connectors, and conditions it for the CPU with a 12-phase VRM. The board features a “monochromatic design,” so you can deck it up with your own LED lighting. It does feature RGB LED headers, with support for ASUS Aura Sync platform. The board has its own diagnostic LEDs that guide you through the POST sequence. Besides the ROG stylized chipset and CPU VRM heatsinks, the board features plastic I/O shield covers that run the length of the board.
The AM4 socket is wired to four DDR4 DIMM slots, which support up to 64 GB of dual-channel DDR4 memory; and two PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slots (x8/x8 when both are populated). The third x16 slot is electrical gen 3.0 x4, and wired to the chipset. Both primary x16 slots feature metal-reinforcements that minimize PCB bending. Storage connectivity include eight SATA 6 Gb/s ports, and one 32 Gb/s M.2 slot with NVMe boot support. The board is packed to the brim with USB connectivity, including 12 USB 3.0 ports (eight on the rear panel, four by headers), and four USB 3.1 ports (two on the rear panel, including a type-C port; two via headers).
Networking connectivity includes 802.11ac WLAN, Bluetooth 4.0, gigabit Ethernet driven by an Intel-made controller. The board features ASUS’ highest grade onboard audio solution, featuring an ESS 9023P DAC, RC4580 buffer chip, a high-precision clock-generator, a de-pop circuit, Nichicon Muse audio-grade capacitors, ground-layer isolation, and EMI shielding over the key components.
