Building on the the excitement of its upcoming AMD Ryzen processors, Asus announced four new AM4 motherboards designed to support the new CPUs.
The ROG Crosshair VI Hero will be Asus’s AM4 flagship. It features superior cooling over the board’s power regulation circuitry, which should help to improve overclocking results. It also has a higher-quality audio sub-system that uses Asus' SupremeFX technology to improve sound clarity.
Asus opted not to add display connections on the ROG Crosshair VI Hero. As this is a high-end board, video ports built into the motherboard would likely have gone unused, so this was a sensible choice. All of the other new AM4 motherboards Asus announced do have video ports on board, though.
The Prime X370 Pro is also targeted at enthusiasts, but it has smaller heatsinks over the VRMs and lacks a liquid-filled heatpipe. It also has slightly lower-end audio. The Prime X370 Pro does have a DisplayPort and an HDMI port, however, which make it a better option if you plan to use one of AMD’s next-gen APUs.
Next up is the Prime B350M-Plus, which uses the B350 chipset. Its feature set is further reduced compared to the X370 boards in that it has fewer power phases, smaller heatsinks, a less powerful NIC, and a lower-end audio codec. It also loses SLI support, as the CPU’s PCI-E 3.0 lanes are locked to a single PCI-E slot.
The last board announced, the Prime B350M-A, is also the only motherboard Asus announced today in the micro-ATX form factor. Although it technically can overclock too, it lacks heatsinks over the VRMs and will likely have poor overclocking results as a result.
All of these boards are now available for pre-order. See pricing information below.
| Asus Ryzen AM4 Motherboards | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Model | ROG Crosshair VI Hero | Prime X370-Pro | Prime B350-Plus | Prime B350M-A |
| Size | ATX | ATX | ATX | MicroATX |
| Chipset | X370 | X370 | B350 | B350 |
| Memory | 4 x DDR4-2666MHz+ | 4 x DDR4-2666 | 4 x DDR4-2666 | 4 x DDR4-2666 |
| Multi-GPU | CrossFireX2 x SLI | CrossFireX2 x SLI | CrossFireX | No |
| PCI-E | 2 x PCI-E x 16 3.0PCI-E x 16 2.03 x PCI-E x 1 2.0 | 2 x PCI-E x 16 3.0PCI-E x 16 2.03 x PCI-E x 1 2.0 | PCI-E x 16 3.0PCI-E x 16 2.02 x PCI-E x 1 2.0 | PCI-E x 16 3.02 x PCI-E x 1 2.0 |
| M.2 | Key M x4/SATAKey E | Key M x4/SATA | Key M x4/SATA | Key M x4/SATA |
| SATA | 8 x SATA-III | 8 x SATA-III | 6 x SATA-III | 6 x SATA-III |
| Ethernet | Intel Gigabit Ethernet | Intel Gigabit Ethernet | Realtek Gigabit Ethernet | Realtek |
| Audio | Asus SupremeFX S1220 | Realtek S1220A | Realtek 887-VD2 | 887-VD2 |
| USB 3.1 | FrontType-CType-A | Front2 x Type-A | 2 x Type-A | 2 x Type-A |
| Display Output Ports | No | DisplayPort 1.2HDMI 1.4b | HDMI 1.4bDVI-DVGA | Yes |
| Aura LED | Chipset Heatsink2 x Strip Headers | 1 x Strip Header | N/A | N/A |
| Price | $255 | $170 | $100 | $90 |
