ASUS Crosshair VI Hero AM4 Motherboard Review

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The box for the Crosshair VI Hero is particularly sharp we think. It follows the fairly standard ROG stylings, but the addition of a diagonal break and the black sides really look great. The Crosshair VI Hero itself continues the recent trend of ASUS motherboards looking fantastic with their large heatsink covering the power phases and blending into the IO portion. Add this to the chipset heatsink itself and the parts of the motherboard design that are within ASUS control have all been given a high level of attention to detail. The main two PCI Express slots have the metal reinforcement that is finding a place on nearly every motherboard we see these days, although oddly ASUS have not implemented it on the DIMM slots. The M.2 slot is behind the SATA ports, which is an improvement upon the positioning we saw on the Gigabyte Gaming 5 where it was under the GPU. ASUS have also eschewed the SATA Express which has been superseded by M.2 drives, much like Intel’s Thunderbolt was beaten by USB 3.1. As well as plenty of fan headers, dedicated pump headers and the 4 pin slots for the ASUS Aura lighting, the Crosshair VI Hero has headers for front panel USB 3.1, USB 3 and USB 2, so if the amount of USB ports on the rear aren’t sufficient there are tons of further options to ensure that not even the most gadget heavy user will run out of places to charge/play.