ASUS Unveils Sexy ROG Crosshair VIII Dark Hero Motherboard with Passive Cooling

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Images: ASUS



Feeding off the hype of today’s AMD Ryzen 5000 Series announcement, ASUS has shared a look at its latest X570 motherboard for red team devotees: the ROG Crosshair VIII Dark Hero. This is a sleek, matte-black motherboard that should meet the needs of overclockers who are not only seeking performance, but a clean aesthetic.



It also seems to be a great choice for those of you who can’t stand chipset fans. According to ASUS, this is the first X570 motherboard from the company that features passive cooling. This feat was achieved with a “massive” heatsink for increased heat dissipation.



“The massive amount of PCIe 4.0 bandwidth available from the X570 chipset requires a careful approach to achieve fanless...
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They don't have full specifications on their site yet, but it looks to be a mid-range option as opposed to the standard Hero boards which aren't. However, it doesn't look like its as feature rich as the Crosshair VIII Formula.
 
The question is, is this the board to target for a water cooled 5950x, or should I really be looking at spending the extra 200(+) for the Crosshair?
 
Endgame said:
The question is, is this the board to target for a water cooled 5950x, or should I really be looking at spending the extra 200(+) for the Crosshair?
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I don't know yet. I need more information before I could make a recommendation on that. As I said, ASUS saying its 16 phase or whatever doesn't mean anything. I have to have the board in hand to know if they are pulling their usual marketing shenanigans or not.
 
Dan_D said:
I don't know yet. I need more information before I could make a recommendation on that. As I said, ASUS saying its 16 phase or whatever doesn't mean anything. I have to have the board in hand to know if they are pulling their usual marketing shenanigans or not.
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I get that. Ideally I’d like to have all the components purchased for the new rig, except CPU by the end of October so I can split the purchase across credit card cycles. Initially, it looked like things would work out perfectly - PSU, Case, and Fans in August, 3090 in Sept, core components like MB and Ram in oct and CPU in Nov. more and more it looks like almost everything landing in Nov
 
northrop said:
I don't know about sexy, but at least it's aesthetically better looking than the beautiful NZXT, IMO.
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I like white and I usually like NZXTs styling, but there's just something awkward about that board.

At least this ASUS looks clean in all black. Maybe it's the coordinated pattern on the M.2 sinks, but even without the full PCB covered, I do quite like it.

Looking at X570 and 5000-series Ryzens, I guess I only have a few real requirements: the first is 10Gbit copper, and the second is an M.2 AIC cause two on the board just ain't enough (my current Z390 board has three M.2 NVMe slots), all without compromising single-slot lanes for a GPU. And given where 10Gbit has wound up in more recent motherboard pricing structures, I'm not confident that it'll be worth paying to get it onboard, so I'm probably looking at an AIC for that too.

Storm Nobleheart said:
I will likely pick this board up along with the 5950X if it has a thunderbolt header.
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AMDs reluctance to putting a GPU on all of their commercial CPUs does bite them in the back a bit here. I'd also consider Thunderbolt to be a pretty strong want; it's just so **** rare to find it well implemented in AIB offerings.
 
It is looking like it may not have thunderbolt. I do not get this as some of the B550 offerings from Asus have thunderbolt and none of the X570 boards.
 
Anyone happen to have an educated guess on what the pricing of this board will be?
 
Armenius said:
About tree-fiddy ($350, that is).
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$350-$380 would be my guess. ASUS' refresh boards usually occupy the same price point as their predecessors. This looks a little nicer so it probably will have a small price premium over the earlier model.
 
Bummer! I'm trying to stay under $250... preferably at $200 but all the good Asus X570 boards seem to be sitting at or above the $300 mark.
 
xGryfter said:
Bummer! I'm trying to stay under $250... preferably at $200 but all the good Asus X570 boards seem to be sitting at or above the $300 mark.
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Unfortunately, that's precisely the case. About $300 is what you need to spend to get a good motherboard with quality VRM. Having said that, there are a couple of exceptions. MSI's X570 Tomahawk is around $200 if I am not mistaken. The other would be the MSI MEG X570 Unify. It's $300-$310, but if you are buying a processor and live near enough to a Microcenter, you can get $40 off the motherboard with the purchase of a Ryzen series CPU at the same time. Microcenter's pricing is generally without equal, so it works.
 
Oh well... I'll probably just stick with the planned ROG Strix X570-E Gaming then.
 
Been very happy with the AORUS board I bought two years ago for $190. It even has an Intel NIC ;). Been running my 9900K at 5.0 GHz all cores without issues. Maybe with Ryzen it's different, or motherboards have just gotten a lot more expensive over the past couple years.
 
Armenius said:
or motherboards have just gotten a lot more expensive over the past couple years.
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I have to believe so as well. Heck, a couple of years ago a person could pick up a fairly top tier board in the $200 range. Now a person is looking more in the $300 to $500 range. Seems insane.
 
stinger608 said:
I have to believe so as well. Heck, a couple of years ago a person could pick up a fairly top tier board in the $200 range. Now a person is looking more in the $300 to $500 range. Seems insane.
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It seems like Ryzen + pandemic + demand + X570 is just plain expensive on top.

And the best Ryzen boards still have Intel wired and wireless NICs, cause you're not going to get better at anywhere near an affordable price...
 
stinger608 said:
I have to believe so as well. Heck, a couple of years ago a person could pick up a fairly top tier board in the $200 range. Now a person is looking more in the $300 to $500 range. Seems insane.
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And along time ago motherboards cost $100 or so and didn't have a drive controller, no network controllers, no onboard audio, no cache memory, and a slot for a co-processor. Those were the days. :) Costs have gone up and they've done so dramatically in the last few years. That said, $500+ motherboards have been a thing since the X58 chipset days. The GIGABYTE X58-UD9 was such a board.
 
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