Component Analysis

If you read our ASUS ROG Crosshair X670E Hero review a year ago a lot will be very familiar, with one or two exceptions. With the heatsinks removed its clear one or two areas have changed, both in terms of the chips used and the cooling to deal with them. Underneath the I/O shroud is the ASMedia ASM4242 controller for the two 40 Gbps USB4 Type-C ports, which is a change from the Intel chip used on the X670 model. Here, it's linked using a thermal pad to the large heatsink above too, which is sandwiched between the I/O and VRMs.


A large heatsink cools the pair of X870 chipsets. Having two is the same as it was for X670, reducing costs compared to a single monolithic die and also spreading the heat load, usually removing the need for chipset fans that plagued some X570 motherboards. However, these are the same Promontory 21 chipsets used with X670 so overall performance won't have changed. The Wi-Fi 7 module is also passively cooled by way of thermal paste to link to the I/O shroud heatsink. This is a MediaTek Wi-Fi 7 MT7927 module. If you have a fetish for replacing stock thermal paste and pads to try to improve cooling, the ASUS ROG Crosshair X870E Hero will provide a very fun afternoon indeed.


Finally, there's the audio, this is provided by the Realtek ALC4082 Codec, with the ESS ES9219 QUAD DAC visible on the left along with the isolated audio circuitry.