ASUS confirmed launch pricing at $700, which is a large sum to be sure, although it is more reasonable elsewhere such as in the UK at £570. Even at $700 it's actually not any more than its predecessor cost at launch. Over time the X670E Hero has dropped to a price point of $600, which is $100 less. The AMD X870E chipset introduced Wi-Fi 7 and USB4 as standard as well as wider support for PCIe Gen 5, with high-end boards like this one generally offering more PCIe Gen 5 M.2 ports on the PCB as standard, too. The Hero has seen a significant evolution in its lifespan and now sits at the premium end of the ASUS line up, with TUF and Prime models offering more affordable price points. Directly comparing to the X670 Crosshair Hero, there's Wi-Fi 7 versus Wi-Fi 6E, but while USB4 was optional with X670E (now standard on X870E), the older model did still include it, albeit with a different controller.

That removes one of the reasons to pick X870 over X670 in this case, meaning that it's mostly down to the new board's additional ASUS-specific features to justify itself, but again, a lot of these were included with the previous board in some way. It might not have been able to house three PCIe Gen 5 SSDs on the PCB itself, but it did include an add-on card for that purpose. It also included 60 W power delivery for the case front panel Type-C port. Other extras this time around include a 5 Gbit LAN port, M.2 Q-Release and Slim SAS, as well as the upgraded and in our opinion nicer-looking Polymo Lighting II display.

For a board of its caliber and price, the ASUS ROG Crosshair X870E Hero feels somewhat underwhelming, and several factors contribute to this impression. Firstly, the accessory set is almost non-existent. It's maybe subjective, but seeing a bunch of interesting items in the box adds to the experience of owning a premium motherboard for some. On the flip side you could of course argue that including PCIe expansion cards to boost M.2 ports and cooling is a worse idea than improving the board itself, which is what ASUS has done here fairly successfully. Still, we missed the excitement of sifting through a bunch of fun accessories that you don't get on cheaper boards. Premium price, premium experience and all that. While others have innovated in terms of UEFI BIOS design and features, ASUS only added a nice interactive overview screen. However, the BIOS is clean, functional and consistent, so implementing a redesign that would be a consistent improvement would have been hard to pull off.

The tool-free installation of heatsinks and SSDs is brilliant, but the fact that one of its two PCIe Gen 5 slots can't cool an SSD properly under high-use situations is disappointing. In the past, ASUS has included large heatsinks in the past—these are smaller on the X870E Hero now, so this feels like a bit of a backwards step, albeit a minor one as it only impacts sustained workloads that you might not encounter once all your software is installed. We'd also liked to have seen 10 Gbit LAN on a board costing $700 and would gladly have given up the 2.5 Gbit and 5 Gbit ports, especially as dual LAN ports are excessive for the vast majority of users. Alternatively, just including a single 5 Gbit port and a lower price tag would have probably helped make the board stand out against the competitors. There aren't many other noteworthy niggles, but given it's been two years since Socket AM5 launched, we maybe hoped to see a bit more innovation aside from shaving a few seconds off installing your SSDs, slightly improved layouts and chipsets, and nifty RGB lighting.

As for the competition, from a quick glance over other models we have waiting in our labs, MSI has tweaked its BIOS in a more significant way, which we'll look at soon, and the MPG X870E Carbon WIFI has some more elaborate RGB lighting with a detachable connector on the upper M.2 heatsink that sports an illuminated logo. We also prefer its PCIe quick release mechanism, which can lock your card in place as well as release it and feels very well-made, while also being more substantial than the ASUS PCIe Slot Q-Release Slim included on the X870E Crosshair Hero.

That said, the 18+2+2 power stage VRMs which feature mostly 110 A power stages, are expertly-cooled, not rising above 60°C in our stress test even with minimal airflow over them. That's with a Ryzen 9 9950X under full load in our extended Cinebench R24 stress test. ASUS did a great job here, thanks to the large heatpipe-equipped heatsinks, so there's room to spare here for what AMD has in store at the high-end in future Socket AM5 releases, too.

More generally speaking, buying a premium motherboard at launch can have upsides in longevity though. You get features that for now are high-end—USB4, Wi-Fi 7 and PCIe Gen 5 M.2—but will likely become mainstream during the life of Socket AM5. However, that's a tough argument to make if you're trying to build a balanced PC in terms of price, and you have perfectly acceptable boards available, such as the ASUS TUF GAMING B650-E WI-Fi, which costs $500 (!) less and will comfortably run all but the highest-end processor. No doubt, it will power Ryzen 7 9800X3D just fine.

The argument gets even tougher when you consider the GPU upgrade you could get for $500 or the fact that the Ryzen 9 7900X3D can be found for less than $570 too. From a technical perspective, we don't see any reason for significant performance differences between X670 and X870—both are using the same pair of Promontory 21 chipsets, and the memory stability and overclocking potential is mostly dictated by the memory controller in the I/O die. On the other hand, signal routing and memory slot organization can play a small round for memory tweaking, but it's unlikely that the differences are substantial.

Just like its predecessor, overall, the ASUS X870E Hero is a very solid board that you can enjoy for many years. There are plenty of overclocking and testing tools, it can pump 60 W to your case's Type-C port for fast charging, and while ASUS hasn't made too many improvements to its fan control offerings, it's still easy to use and offers excellent control of your cooling be it air or water-based. Apart from some slightly clunky software and a thin accessory set, ROG fanboys with fat wallets won't be disappointed. It's worth restating its more reasonable pricing in other markets such as the UK where it's £570. As usual, for most of of us, we'd recommend waiting for more reviews to land before reaching for your credit card if you're looking for a high-end Socket AM5 motherboard.