Asus has finally unveiled the ROG Crosshair X870E Extreme motherboard, standing as their flagship offering for the AM5 platform. The motherboard was showcased by Tony Yu at an ROG event held in China yesterday, and is set to launch in late April, priced at 9,999 Chinese Yuan, or around $1,400.
Positioned at the top of Asus' motherboard stack, the X870E Extreme offers a dual-Ethernet setup with two USB4 40 Gbps ports, support for Bluetooth 5.4, Wi-Fi 7, three PCIe 5.0 M.2 slots, alongside two PCIe 5.0 x16 expansion slots, just to name a few. ROG's top-tier motherboards are divided into two camps: Maximus for Intel and Crosshair for AMD. Under these designations exist several sub-brands like Apex, Hero, Formula, and Gene, followed by Extreme, which serves as Asus' most premium (and expensive) option for any given platform.
Following a sneak peek two weeks back, the X870E Extreme is now officially available on Asus' website with comprehensive details, and there's a lot to unpack today. Moving away from the colorful and anime-inspired theme of the previous model, the X870E Extreme adopts a more minimalistic and professional finish, with the E-ATX (Extended ATX) form factor. The power delivery is handled by a combination of 20 power stages at 110A, two additional 110A stages, and two 80A stages powered by dual 8-pin EPS connectors at the top.
In terms of memory support, the X870E Extreme is equipped with four DIMM slots, supporting up to 256GB of memory, with overclocking speeds exceeding 9,000 MT/s on Ryzen 9000 series processors. To the right, there's a small DIMM.2 slot if you need to attach additional M.2 SSDs. The motherboard carries two full-sized PCIe 5.0 x16 expansion slots, with support for Q-Release Slim, presumably with the updated design. The included full-color 5-inch LCD can slide to the right to avoid fan obstruction.
In total, the X870E Extreme provides five M.2 slots, with three supporting PCIe 5.0 x4 speeds and the other two at PCIe 4.0 x4 speeds through the DIMM.2 slot. The first M.2 slot beneath the CPU cooler is equipped with a 3D vapor chamber for heat dissipation. This is in addition to four SATA 6 Gb/s ports for your HDDs and SATA SSDs. The chipset and the remaining M.2 SSDs are guarded by a heatsink for cooling. The right side offers a Q-LED, START, and FLEXKEY buttons with several right-angled connectors.
Wireless connectivity is handled by Wi-Fi 7 (320 MHz) and Bluetooth 5.4, in tandem with a dual-Ethernet solution for wired networking, featuring a Realtek 5GbE port and a Marvell AQtion 10GbE port. Front-panel USB options include a 20 Gbps port (Type-C with 60W PD/QC4+/PPS), a USB 10 Gbps port (Type-C), four USB 5 Gbps ports, and four USB 2.0 ports (using two internal headers each). On the back side, you get two USB4 (40 Gbps) ports, 10x USB 10 Gbps ports (eight Type-A + two Type-C), a BIOS Flashback, and a Clear CMOS button, just to name a few.
According to Asus China, the X870E Extreme will hit shelves in late April, priced at 9,999 Chinese Yuan (~$1,400). We're guessing the pricing will extend to its global counterpart.
