Board Layout

The ASUS ROG Crosshair VIII Extreme is a sight to look at, partially because of the E-ATX form factor, but mainly due to the PCB being covered from top to bottom. The entire lower half is comprised of two heatsinks for the M.2 drives, X570 chipset, and other components that require passive cooling. The top half is equally jaw-dropping with a massive heatsink surrouding the AM4 socket.


Getting a closer look at the socket area, it can certainly be a challenge to install some CPU coolers. The tall VRM heatsinks do not help the situation. It can be frustrating to deal with. Luckily for most, it is a one-time affair when installing an AIO or air-cooler.


The ROG Crosshair VIII Extreme has three PCIe slots in total. The top two slots support PCIe Gen4 and can be configured in either a single 16x slot or split into x8/x8. This leaves a single 1x PCIe Gen3 slot on the bottom.


ASUS placed three M.2 Gen4 x4 sockets on the motherboard. To use all populated M.2 sockets at once requires a bit of trickery since only 20 lanes are provided by the CPU. To use either the second or third socket, the second PCIe slot is disabled, and the primary slot interface drops to 8x Gen4. These additional sockets are disabled by default and must be manually enabled in the BIOS.



One of the more premium features this motherboard includes is ASUS's exclusive DIMM.2 slot. This daughterboard has additional M.2 sockets that can be slotted in next to the memory. The full bandwidth comes from the X570 (PCH) and does not disable anything else when in use.


Of the five M.2 sockets, three have ASUS Q-latches, which is a screwless design. It makes swapping M.2 drives without worrying about losing screws a breeze.


The board has a total of six SATA 6 Gb/s ports on the side, angled 90 degrees from the board.


ASUS placed a number of voltage read points above the DIMM slots. These include Vcore, MB_SOC, DRAM, 1.8 PLL, and SB.


Along the right side of the motherboard is the on-board power button followed by the ASUS flex key. This flex key can be customized to be a Safe Boot, Direct BIOS or reset button. It comes in handy when overclocking as there's no need to clear the CMOS if stuck. Underneath the plastic, two fan and ARGB Gen2 headers at a 90 degree angle are found.


A slew of headers, buttons, and switches have been placed across the bottom. It can be overwhelming to look at. Some honorable mentions are the water-flow header, LN2 mode jumper, and slow-mode switch. These of course are premium features that generally go unused, but are there just in case.


The ASUS ROG Crosshair VIII Extreme has a fantastic feature set including Wi-Fi 6E, Dual LAN, a pair of Thunderbolt 4 ports, and numerous USB 3.2 Type-A ports.

• 2x Thunderbolt™ 4 USB Type-C® port(s)
• 8x USB 3.2 Gen 2 port(s) (8x Type-A)
• 2x DisplayPort IN ports for Thunderbolt™ 4
• ASUS Wi-Fi Module
• Marvell® AQtion AQC113CS 10Gb Ethernet
• Intel® I225-V 2.5Gb Ethernet
• 5x LED-illuminated audio jacks
• Optical S/PDIF Out port
• BIOS FlashBack™ button
• Clear CMOS button