ASUS Shows Off the ROG Crosshair X670E Extreme

[TheLostSwede]

Although AMD didn't provide too many details during its Computex 2022 keynote speech about the upcoming AM5 platform, the company did announce that there will be at least three chipsets for the platform and showed pictures of some upcoming motherboards. ASUS has kindly filled in some more details about its upcoming ROG Crosshair X670E Extreme, which will be one of its higher-end models. Sadly the pictures posted are kind of tiny and the company didn't provide a shot of the rear I/O. That said, ASUS did point out some of its new features that we can expect to find on the ROG Crosshair X670E Extreme.

For starters, the board will have a pair of PCIe 5.0 x16 slots, although each slot is likely to only have eight lanes each, when both slots are in use, but ASUS doesn't mention any details here. The board has support for up to five M.2 NVMe SSDs, four of which support PCIe 5.0. Only two are onboard, with the other three being via ASUS' proprietary ROG PCIe 5.0 M.2 card and ROG GEN-Z.2 card. ASUS also promises USB4 support, as well as a USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 header with Quick Charge 4+ as well as up to 60 W charging support, for cases with a front USB-C port. On top of the rear I/O is an AniMe Matrix LED display that can be user customised.




ASUS has gone for a 20+2 "teamed power stage" that is rated for 110 A, which should hopefully give plenty of headroom for AMD's upcoming 170 W TDP CPUs, especially as AMD announced that the X670E chipset was for extreme overclocking. ASUS has carried over its Q-Release button for the graphics card from its Z690 boards, as well as its Q-Latch for M.2 SSDs. The board will also have a Q-Code debug LED display and a Q-LED diagnostics LED array. On the top of LEDs, ASUS has also installed multiple ARGB headers on the board.

Other features include a Marvell AQtion 10 Gbps Ethernet controller, an Intel 2.5 Gbps Ethernet controller and WiFi 6E support. ASUS has also updated its SupremeFX audio solution with an ESS ES9218PQ Quad DAC setup that delivers a 130 dB signal-to-noise ratio. The board also has six SATA ports and what appears to be all right-angled connectors, including the power connector. Other things not mentioned is a PCIe x4 slot of unknown PCIe revision, a set of switches and buttons along the bottom of the board that are normally related to overclocking, as well as what appears to be a power and reset CMOS button at the top of the board.

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[Chaitanya]

Thats a beefy heatsink for M.2 slot. Also looks like X670E boards will be north of $750 by the look of things.

 

[TheLostSwede]

Thats a beefy heatsink for M.2 slot. Also looks like X670E boards will be north of $750 by the look of things.

The beefy heatsink is for the chipset.
The first M.2 slot should be under the EXTREME bit, below the CPU socket and the second one just above the bottom x16 slot.
I guess this will be the equivalent of the US$1,099.99 ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme.

 

[Ferrum Master]

AQN-107 so again an old PCIe3 solution eating 4 lanes... it really seems there are no other native Pcie4 options ready for mainstream.

I had a flashback from my old Socket F boards seeing the LGA pin arrangement.

 

[Chaitanya]

The beefy heatsink is for the chipset.
The first M.2 slot should be under the EXTREME bit, below the CPU socket and the second one just above the bottom x16 slot.
I guess this will be the equivalent of the US$1,099.99 ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme.

Look at the heatsink on Dimm.2/M.2 slot next to Ram slots. Older Dimm.2 slots had slabs of aluminium for "heatsinks". Also other boards showcased seem to be lacking with Sata ports which seems like a step backwards.

 

[Ferrum Master]

Look at the heatsink on Dimm.2/M.2 slot next to Ram slots. Older Dimm.2 slots had slabs of aluminium for "heatsinks". Also other boards showcased seem to be lacking with Sata ports which seems like a step backwards.

yeah but those sinks are exactly for the chipset.... the pipes go down... it is an blast from the hot past also... they are not gimping on it.

 

[TheLostSwede]

Look at the heatsink on Dimm.2/M.2 slot next to Ram slots. Older Dimm.2 slots had slabs of aluminium for "heatsinks". Also other boards showcased seem to be lacking with Sata ports which seems like a step backwards.

Sure, but that heatsink is for cooling three drives, if the info posted by Asus is correct.

 

[Ferrum Master]

Sure, but that heatsink is for cooling three drives, if the info posted by Asus is correct.

Two? I can't see the upper one being connected to the right one... it may connect the the left I/O plane.

Also the plastic shroud with RGB could be made fully from plastic... ie it really only cools the bridges.

 

[TheLostSwede]

Two? I can't see the upper one being connected to the right one... it may connect the the left I/O plane.

Also the plastic shroud with RGB could be made fully from plastic... ie it really only cools the bridges.

Asus said three...
Although reading the text again, it seems like there are multiple cards...
Updated the news post accordingly.

Between its two onboard slots and the three additional slots made available through the ROG PCIe 5.0 M.2 card and the ROG GEN-Z.2 card

 

[TheUnbrained]

This Socket gave me C32 flashbacks ...

 

[Totally]

yeah but those sinks are exactly for the chipset.... the pipes go down... it is an blast from the hot past also... they are not gimping on it.

It was that or a fan, and they already know how much people are going cry about a fan, and looks that they don't want deal with that this time.

 

[Valantar]

yeah but those sinks are exactly for the chipset.... the pipes go down... it is an blast from the hot past also... they are not gimping on it.

That finned heatsink to the right of the RAM is clearly connected to the DIMM.2 riser card that's directly next to it. There's no way they've placed a chipset (which is after all an I/O hub) in the upper right of the board, as that would make trace routing for the I/O connected to it a complete nightmare. The chipset is most likely beneath the giant slab "heatsink" in the middle-lower right somewhere.

 

[WhitetailAni]

AMD's upcoming 170 W TDP CPUs

They're not 170W TDP, they're 170W PPT. From porina over on LTT forums:

I'm currently watching a replay of Ian Cutress' watch party since I woke up late to see it live. In it he says he had checked before with AMD what that 170W actually was. AMD apparently confirmed to him it was PPT, not TDP.

 

[Ferrum Master]

That finned heatsink to the right of the RAM is clearly connected to the DIMM.2 riser card that's directly next to it. There's no way they've placed a chipset (which is after all an I/O hub) in the upper right of the board, as that would make trace routing for the I/O connected to it a complete nightmare. The chipset is most likely beneath the giant slab "heatsink" in the middle-lower right somewhere.

Ah, the pipes are rounded up, not going down.

Well... historically they could route pipes anywhere, like ultra hot X58 chipsets, wasn't a problem, altou the bridge could handle temps up to 110C .

 

[Valantar]

Ah, the pipes are rounded up, not going down.

Well... historically they could route pipes anywhere, like ultra hot X58 chipsets, wasn't a problem, altou the bridge could handle temps up to 110C .

Sure, but that heatpipe clearly wraps back underneath the fin stack, the entirety of which looks like it's attached to that PCB sticking out of the slot in the motherboard. So that's the DIMM.2. I don't doubt the X670(E) chipset consumes a noticeable amount of power, but being on 6nm it's probably quite a lot more efficient than the 12nm X570, and they even cooled later revisions of that passively. One of those huge aluminium slabs across the lower portion of the board is probably plenty for chipset cooling.

 

[Nephilim666]

I wonder if my existing Dimm.2 card will be compatible with that slot...

 

[eidairaman1]

Rather see more than 2 PCIE slots, wtf is wrong with these companies.

We all don't just run a gpu!

 

[Valantar]

Rather see more than 2 PCIE slots, wtf is wrong with these companies.

We all don't just run a gpu!

Looks to me like there are three - there's an x4 down in the bottom slot area of the board.

 

[Ferrum Master]

Looks to me like there are three - there's an x4 down in the bottom slot area of the board.

Probably the usual case where it halves the top slot lanes when used... you put a sound card there in the most natural place it could be, furthest from the GPU at the bottom and if you have a nvme HHHL card like Optane... it will give you a surprise running at half speed... my ASUS X570 has a such great "feature".

The rant about lack of slots is really an actual pain...

I would like to have like PCIe expansion card with pcie bifurcation and have 4 drives there. You can easily swap them, and cooling is better. And ASUS actually has things like that... it is just a piece of PCB with some simple plastic and without expensive controllers... basically it doesn't cost much and should be added by default imho.

I also like independent USB expansion cards... because I often test faulty devices that can fry the USB... next thing are capture cards... well... it is a workstation... some people not only game on them, but buy them because of customizability. The intel mainstream chipset were so anemic in PCIe department and making an artificial segmentation to force you to use HEDT for more PCIe lanes... that's another di*k move in my book.

 

[Valantar]

Probably the usual case where it halves the top slot lanes when used... you put a sound card there in the most natural place it could be, furthest from the GPU at the bottom and if you have a nvme HHHL card like Optane... it will give you a surprise running at half speed... my ASUS X570 has a such great "feature".

The rant about lack of slots is really an actual pain...

I would like to have like PCIe expansion card with pcie bifurcation and have 4 drives there. You can easily swap them, and cooling is better. And ASUS actually has things like that... it is just a piece of PCB with some simple plastic and without expensive controllers... basically it doesn't cost much and should be added by default imho.

I also like independent USB expansion cards... because I often test faulty devices that can fry the USB... next thing are capture cards... well... it is a workstation... some people not only game on them, but buy them because of customizability. The intel mainstream chipset were so anemic in PCIe department and making an artificial segmentation to force you to use HEDT for more PCIe lanes... that's another di*k move in my book.

Sounds to me like what you're looking for is a workstation platform, one that has a different featureset from these consumer platforms. Though most likely you'll find what you're looking for in some pro/creative oriented X670E motherboard, given that those have more PCIe. The regular platforms just don't have the connectivity for what you're asking for. Though most likely you'll have to split that quad SSD adapter card into two dual drive ones, as chipset lanes are rarely connected as a single x16 slot - what you're mentioning here is essentially the only use case for such a slot, after all. And, of course, there's no way of getting what you ask for out of a CPU with 16+4+4 PCIe lanes, unless you're willing to sacrifice your GPU. Bifurcation support is absolutely important, but unless AMD has changed how they approach this, it will be there - even B550 AFAIK allows for splitting the PEG x16 slot into x4+x4+x4+x4.

 

[Ferrum Master]

Sounds to me like what you're looking for is a workstation platform, one that has a different featureset from these consumer platforms. Though most likely you'll find what you're looking for in some pro/creative oriented X670E motherboard, given that those have more PCIe. The regular platforms just don't have the connectivity for what you're asking for. Though most likely you'll have to split that quad SSD adapter card into two dual drive ones, as chipset lanes are rarely connected as a single x16 slot - what you're mentioning here is essentially the only use case for such a slot, after all. And, of course, there's no way of getting what you ask for out of a CPU with 16+4+4 PCIe lanes, unless you're willing to sacrifice your GPU. Bifurcation support is absolutely important, but unless AMD has changed how they approach this, it will be there - even B550 AFAIK allows for splitting the PEG x16 slot into x4+x4+x4+x4.

Well.. there are some tiny pcie 2x slot lanes from PCH that are often put in idiotic place where GPU covers them etc ... sometimes it is weird, I use a riser cable and route those spare lanes elsewhere... well just to point out, that the lanes are there, but... damn... the slots are routed often in rather weird way.

I came from X99 where you had them enough... but it is an artificial segregation, things like that should die... the fun part comes, that the most rational pcie layout comes with most expensive boards and they kinda intentionally make some stupid arrangement for more budget friendly options just because for the more expensive ones have some advantage. I didn't do X299 because of mesh topology, those CPU's suck at gaming and cost and arm and leg and offer you nothing more and HEDT really died recently as a thing, I do not treat Threadrippers as HEDT as those are different animals, more like home chibi server rendering farm. ie Like in old days I had Tyan Socket F duallies. The distinctive feature should be good at overclocking.

 

[Valantar]

Well.. there are some tiny pcie 2x slot lanes from PCH that are often put in idiotic place where GPU covers them etc ... sometimes it is weird, I use a riser cable and route those spare lanes elsewhere... well just to point out, that the lanes are there, but... damn... the slots are routed often in rather weird way.

I came from X99 where you had them enough... but it is an artificial segregation, things like that should die... the fun part comes, that the most rational pcie layout comes with most expensive boards and they kinda intentionally make some stupid arrangement for more budget friendly options just because for the more expensive ones have some advantage. I didn't do X299 because of mesh topology, those CPU's suck at gaming and cost and arm and leg and offer you nothing more and HEDT really died recently as a thing, I do not treat Threadrippers as HEDT as those are different animals, more like home chibi server rendering farm. ie Like in old days I had Tyan Socket F duallies. The distinctive feature should be good at overclocking.

While I definitely understand where you're coming from, I think you're making unreasonable demands here, and not at all acknowledging the realities surrounding the design and implementation of such a platform. After all, this is a mainstream platform - even if it's also largely supplanting HEDT in terms of core counts and performance. That breadth means compromise, as it needs to accommodate a wide price range, and more importantly, needs to be designed explicitly towards mainstream needs. (To be clear: "enthusiast gaming" is firmly within the mainstream in terms of hardware requirements.)

Remember: a mainstream gaming PC - which is the vast majority of high performance PCs - will never see more than a single AIC, which will be a GPU, and will most likely have a single m.2 SSD, with the potential for a second being added down the line, or a single 2.5"/3.5" storage device. And that's it. These motherboards are designed explicitly for those use cases, with some concessions towards more enthusiast use: more m.2, some more expansion. But crucially, this needs to be done in an affordable way, as motherboards are already stupidly expensive. (And yes, we could list off a huge list of features that IMO are unnecessary costs - but many of those are explicit sales drivers for the mainstream, like RGB and flashy designs.)

You, on the other hand, have very non-mainstream desires: another fully populated x16 slot for NVMe, and slots for Optane, USB controllers, etc. Even if that Optane drive was x4 and the USB controller x1, that's still a very specific implementation requiring 21 PCIe lanes in addition to the x16 from the CPU (and which renders the x4 from the CPU irrelevant due to it being specifically for individual NVMe). Would this be possible to implement with the lane count of this platform? Absolutely. But it would be rather costly, forcing the rerouting of the CPU NVMe lanes into some general purpose use - which would also explicitly take away a feature that most users want (fast, CPU-connected NVMe). Another solution would be a PLX switch, though that would drive board prices through the roof.

The point being: critiquing mainstream products - even crazy expensive "enthusiast gaming" ones from a workstation perspective is ... well, kind of invalid as a critique. A carpenter complaining that a Corolla can't fit as many tools as his Hiace wouldn't make sense either - even if the Corolla is a souped-up RS model or whatever. The issue is, of course, that your niche in the market is kind of dying out, with ever fewer options - and that's a shame. Hopefully we'll see some "WS"-oriented motherboards for this platform that focuses on more PCIe expansion - the IO is there, after all, and some of it could be solved with selective A/B disabling of ports (i.e. using PCIe x4_1 disables m.2_1, etc.). But it will come at a cost for both hardware development and BIOS development. But other than that, this is just a consequence of how PC hardware and PC use is evolving - mainstream performance supplanting all but the most extreme HEDT platforms, and mainstream platforms also gaining connectivity, but less of it as mainstream users just don't need it. Which puts people who need connectivity more than extreme multi core performance in a bind - but one that's kind of unavoidable unless you want to artificially delimit MSDT platforms to lower core counts or lower performance.

 

[Ferrum Master]

Which puts people who need connectivity more than extreme multi core performance in a bind.

I would agree that B series chipsets are the ones for all, for those who need the basic combo... then what for are the Intel flagship Zs? Epeen only? What is the the real justified margin you get for it? The market segregation is way gone off in nonsense because of that. They are so overpriced and yet you get the taste of something missing.

We pay more each year for that basic feature set and yet often get less. You have to look up to segment you really don't need besides the expansion slots. Yes, those who need faster NICs like 5/10GBe are also in the same boat as me and not many boards will have it and yet they cut down a easy route to expand the needed upgrade by limited pcie lane arrangement.

But in the end, the idea is, the lanes are often enough at least with X570... they manage to split them in most weird ways, just because to create more variety of boards for the sake of variety, but in the end the most reasonable is the most expensive one.

 

[TheLostSwede]

Updated with at least one higher resolution image of the board.

 

[Valantar]

I would agree that B series chipsets are the ones for all, for those who need the basic combo... then what for are the Intel flagship Zs? Epeen only? What is the the real justified margin you get for it? The market segregation is way gone off in nonsense because of that. They are so overpriced and yet you get the taste of something missing.

We pay more each year for that basic feature set and yet often get less. You have to look up to segment you really don't need besides the expansion slots. Yes, those who need faster NICs like 5/10GBe are also in the same boat as me and not many boards will have it and yet they cut down a easy route to expand the needed upgrade by limited pcie lane arrangement.

But in the end, the idea is, the lanes are often enough at least with X570... they manage to split them in most weird ways, just because to create more variety of boards for the sake of variety, but in the end the most reasonable is the most expensive one.

The thing is, market segmentation is moving because usage patterns are shifting. Back in the early-to-mid 2010s, you could quite easily group together many groups into the "HEDT" segment: people wanting high core counts (>4), people wanting more RAM channels, people wanting extreme playthings, people wanting more I/O. Now, two of the three first of those categories have been absorbed entirely into MSDT - core counts are higher on MSDT than they were on HEDT for most of the 2010s and the "extreme plaything" category has followed along, while RAM channels have shown themselves to be mostly useless to all consumer workloads. That removes most of the foundation for what used to be the HEDT market, which has shifted in response towards extreme core counts, tons of I/O, and other specialty, low-volume use cases. But that also makes HEDT much, much more of a niche - and, of course, much more expensive. There just isn't the market basis for sustaining the previous "in-between" HEDT market any more, as most of the people who used to buy HEDT are perfectly happy with MSDT these days. Unfortunately you just happen to be in the one group that doesn't really need HEDT, but isn't served by current MSDT offerings either.

As for your descriptions of MSDT platforms here, you're just plain wrong. You say "We pay more each year for that basic feature set and yet often get less". While it's absolutely true that prices for motherboards have been steadily increasing - which really sucks, IMO - a significant portion of this is due to the ever increasing amount of high speed I/O making motherboards more expensive. PCIe 4.0 requires thicker boards and better PCB materials than 3.0, increasing prices. 4.0 for lower down slots requires redrivers. 5.0 requires retimers, which is an even higher cost. USB 3.0 was relatively simple; 10G USB started getting complex; 20G USB pushes board complexity really far, and now we're looking at 40G USB4. Support for faster DDR4 kind of came along with the better boards for PCIe 4.0, but now we're looking at extremely sensitive DDR5 setups, which puts further pressure on trace routing and board design. So: a large portion of the reason why we're paying more is because we're getting more. We're getting more I/O (X670E has 40 PCIe 5.0 lanes! Intel HEDT used to have 44 3.0 lanes!), but crucially we're also getting much, much faster I/O, which is rapidly running into physical limitations that sadly also means increased prices.

It's also quite telling that you say the most reasonable boards are the most expensive ones: I would tie that directly into your use case being the most traditional workstation one, i.e. one that prioritizes PCIe over m.2 and rear I/O, for example. And that's a relatively small niche while one that demands high quality, which means high prices. IMO, the most reasonable boards are almost always the cheapest ones: the ones without overblown VRMs that nobody needs; the ones without tons of RGB; the ones with a single x16 slot for a GPU and maybe an x4 for a NIC or capture card, and which might be able to split that x16 into x8+x8. It just goes to show: what is reasonable depends on your use case, and it seems to me you need to start accepting that your use case places you in an expensive niche - or accept using riser cables and other hacks. m.2 slots are excellent sources for x4 PCIe connections