Asus ROG Crosshair X870E Extreme Motherboard review: Flagship value, with minimal sacrifices

A viable X870E flagship, but looks better at $899

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Asus ROG Crosshair X870E Extreme
(Image: © Tom's Hardware)

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Firmware

Asus’ BIOS on the X870E Extreme resembles any other ROG board, featuring the familiar black and red ROG theme that is easy to read. Asus starts in Easy Mode, which displays high-level information, including CPU and memory clock speeds, temperatures, fan speeds, and storage information. Advanced Mode has several headers across the top that drop down additional options. The new Q-Dashboard shows all the integrated connectivity. When hardware is connected, there’s a green circle next to it. The BIOS is one of my favorites, as any option you need is readily available, and anything you use frequently isn’t buried deep within menus.

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Asus ROG Crosshair X870E Extreme - BIOS Images
(Image credit: Future)

Software

Armoury Crate here also follows the ROG-inspired theme. Several applications exist for various functions, ranging from RGB lighting control and audio to system monitoring and overclocking. It's also worth mentioning the included software. When purchasing this Asus motherboard, you get a one-year AIDA64 license - a helpful application for stress and performance testing. Asus’ Driver Hub (get your updated drivers here!), Dolby Atmos (for audio) and a custom version of Hwinfo for real-time monitoring are also helpful applications. We’ve captured a few screenshots of the applications below.

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Asus ROG Crosshair X870E Extreme - Armoury Crate
(Image credit: Future)

Test System / Comparison Products

We’ve updated our test system to Windows 11 (23H2) 64-bit OS with all updates applied as of late September 2024 (this includes the Branch Prediction Optimizations for AMD). Hardware-wise, we’ve updated the RAM kits (matching our Intel test system), cooling, storage, and video card. Unless otherwise noted, we use the latest non-beta motherboard BIOS available to the public. Thanks to Asus for providing the RTX 4080 TUF graphics card and Crucial for the 2TB T705 SSDs. The hardware we used is as follows:

Test System Components

Swipe to scroll horizontally

CPU

AMD Ryzen 9 9900X

Cooling

Arctic Liquid Freezer II 420

Storage

Crucial 2TB T705 M.2 PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSD

RAM

Kingston Fury Beast DDR5-6000 CL36 (KF560C36BBEAK2-32)

RAM

Teamgroup T-Froce Delta DDR5-7200 CL34 (FF3D518G7200HC34ABK)

RAM

Klevv Cras XR5 RGB DDR5-8000 (KD5AGUA80-80R380S)

GPU

Asus TUF RTX 4080 16G

PSU

EVGA Supernova 850W P6

Software

Windows 11 64-bit (24H2)

Graphics

NVIDIA Driver 561.09

Sound

Integrated HD audio

Network

Integrated Networking (GbE to 10 GbE)

Asus ROG Crosshair X870E Extreme - Test Bed

(Image credit: Future)

Benchmark Settings

Swipe to scroll horizontally

Synthetic Benchmarks and Settings

Row 0 - Cell 1

Procyon

Version 2.8.1352 64

Row 2 - Cell 0

Office 365, Video Editing (Premiere Pro 24.6.1), Photo Editing (Photoshop 25.1.2, Lightroom Classic 13.5.1)

3DMark

Version 2.29.8294.0 64

Row 4 - Cell 0

Speed Way and Steel Nomad (Default)

Cinebench R24

Version 2024.1.0

Row 6 - Cell 0

Open GL Rendering Benchmark - Single and Multi-threaded

Blender

Version 4.2.0

Row 8 - Cell 0

Full benchmark (all three tests)

Application Tests and Settings

Row 9 - Cell 1

LAME MP3

Version SSE2_2019

Row 11 - Cell 0

Mixed 271MB WAV to mp3: Command: -b 160 -- (160Kb/s)

HandBrake CLI

Version: 1.8.2

Row 13 - Cell 0

Sintel Open Movie Project: 4.19GB 4K mkv to x264 (light AVX) and x265 (heavy AVX)

Corona 1.4

Version 1.4

Row 15 - Cell 0

Custom benchmark

7-Zip

Version 24.08

Row 17 - Cell 0

Integrated benchmark (Command Line)

Game Tests and Settings

Row 18 - Cell 1

Cyberpunk 2077

Ultra RT Preset - 1920 x 1080,  DLSS - Balanced.

F1 2024

Ultra High Preset - 1920 x 1080, 16xAF/TAA, FPS Counter ON, Great Britain (Clear/Dry)

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Joe Shields
Joe Shields
Staff Writer, Components

Joe Shields is a staff writer at Tom’s Hardware. He reviews motherboards and PC components.

2 Comments Comment from the forums
  • razor512
    Those super high end boards are simply not worth it, especially since they are doing nothing to deal with the limited PICe lanes issues. This issue can be resolved as it has been done before. https://www.techpowerup.com/303835/asrock-returns-to-its-roots-with-wacky-x670-upgrade-card
    In this case a board maker added a PCIe card that contained an x670 chipset and effectively allowed 4 PCIe 4.0 lanes to have their bandwidth shared to 20 PCIe lanes. While there would be obvious throughput bottlenecks if you tried to use all 20 lanes, the use case in those situations would not be an issue. For example, Have the second set of PCIe 4.0 x4 lales from the first X870E chipset bo to a 3rd X970E chipset, thus making it so that there are 2 down stream chipsets, and use the 3rd one to handle a bunch of extra PCe lanes for more m.2 slots. so that no bifurcation from the X16 slots need to happen. The performance will still be very good since it is unlikely for someone to try and saturate every chipset lane at the same time, wven withmultiple SSDs, people rarely try to do throughput intensive tasks on multiple at the same time. This is why most people don't complain about the X870 E already sharing a X4 connection with 2-3 m.2 slots as well as 8 SATA ports, and numeroud USB 3.2 gen 2x2 ports, as well as Ethernet, and Audio..

    For the massive price premium and extended ATX design, they could have stuck an additional chipset there to support everything while leaving the main X16 slot alone for the video card.
    Reply
  • thestryker
    razor512 said:
    In this case a board maker added a PCIe card that contained an x670 chipset and effectively allowed 4 PCIe 4.0 lanes to have their bandwidth shared to 20 PCIe lanes.
    They were able to do this because that's how AMD's top end works: it's two chipsets instead of one.
    razor512 said:
    Those super high end boards are simply not worth it, especially since they are doing nothing to deal with the limited PICe lanes issues.
    While I don't disagree with you on the value proposition it's actually not possible to easily resolve the PCIe problem. The only affordable PCIe switches a manufacturer can buy are PCIe 3.0. Every current PCIe switch above 3.0 are made by either Broadcom or Microchip and cost hundreds of dollars.

    Chipsets are the only other cheap PCIe switches, but they're limited in implementation. I'm also certain that Intel at least would not allow them to use it in such a fashion.
    Reply