Hands-On With Asus' AMD X570 Motherboards: From TUF to Crosshair VIII

With AMD’s Ryzen 3000 processors getting official today, alongside the new PCIe 4-packing X570 chipset, you can expect an onslaught of new motherboards to support the platform. We already went hands-on with MSI’s X570 boards, and now it’s time to take a close look at what Asus has to offer.

At an event here at Computex, the company showed off 12 new boards, across four different series, from the flagship Crosshair VIII, to TUF gaming, as well as a workstation-focused X-570-ACE model that includes support for ECC memory and extra management features.

ROG Crosshair VIII Series

Starting off with the flagship enthusiast and gaming boards, Asus ROG Crosshair VIII Formula is liquid-cooling ready and wrapped in armor, with reflective RGB accents.

Stepping down to the Crosshair VIII Hero (Wi-Fi), we see a board without the built-in liquid-cooling options, but still plenty of armor encasing the slots, and lots of RGB lighting.

The Crosshair VIII Impact comes in the not-so-common mini-DTX form factor (think mini-ITX, but longer to make room for an extra slot), designed to deliver the features and power needed for AMD’s latest CPUs, in a comparatively compact size of 8 × 6.7 inches (203 × 170 mm).

ROG Strix and TUF Gaming Series

Asus’s ROG Strix lineup loses some of the Crosshair’s bells and whistles (and armor) in favor of a focus on performance and visual style. The Strix X570-E and Strix X570-F boards are both full-size ATX models, while the X570-I (pictured Above) is a Mini-ITX model that Asus lovingly refers to as a “tiny terror” in its press materials. Given how few compact X370 and X470 boards have been available in the past, it’s nice to see Asus offering up a compact X570 model right out of the Ryzen 3000 launch gate.

With its focus on key gaming features, reliability, and rugged-looking design, the TUF Gaminng X570 lineup thus far includes just one board in two variations: TUF Gaming X570-Plus and TUF Gaming X570-Plus Wi-Fi. Asus points out that despite their lower-end position in the product stack, these boards feature digital VRMs, and TUF capacitors with a 20%-higher heat tolerance to help with overclocking and reliable performance.

X570 WS and Pro

Last up from Asus’ X570 line are a trio of boards with less of a specific focus on gaming or enthusiast features. Asus knows not everyone is into RGB lighting and aggressive gaming features, especially in the workplace.

The Asus Pro WS X570-ACE appeals to workstation users looking to buy into a more-affordable platform, by bringing together the chipset’s PCIe 4 bandwidth with ECC RAM support, and management features that the company says are more common in server-grade setups.

The Prime X570-Pro looks to be a premium all-around performance board with the familiar white-on-black design and a brushed-metal cooler over one of its M.2 slots.