AMD is expected to announce its 5th Gen Ryzen Socket AM4 processors based on the "Zen 3" microarchitecture later today, and it's rumored that these chips will not be accompanied by a new chipset. Motherboard vendors aren't missing the opportunity to refresh their product-stacks with new boards based on existing AMD X570 and B550 chipsets. ASUS has a new premium Socket AM4 product in the works, the ROG Crosshair VIII Dark Hero. We know this board is based on the X570 from its unchanged generation number "VIII," for this chipset.

From what we can tell, the ROG Crosshair VIII Dark Hero is based on an identical PCB design to the original Crosshair VIII Hero/WiFi. The changes appear to be cosmetic, with all of the board's heatsink design and color schemes aligning with the company's latest ROG generation (eg: the Maximus XII Hero). Another interesting spot by our readers is that the board lacks a chipset fan, and makes do with passive cooling for the X570. Dark, diagonal ridges replace the smooth brushed metal with chrome-like accents of the original. It remains to be seen if the new wave of AM4 motherboards come with out-of-the-box support for Ryzen 5000 series, since the data-sheet for the Dark Hero only mentions 2nd- and 3rd-Gen Ryzen chips. In any case, the board supports USB BIOS Flashback, and all AMD 500-series chipset motherboards are expected to receive Ryzen 5000 support through BIOS updates.Update 12:32 UTC: ASUS mentions the two key areas of development for the Dark Hero are a completely fanless chipset cooling solution, and the use of 90 A DrMOS in the CPU VRM (compared to 60 A on the original).