ASUS ROG Crosshair X870E Glacial Review
Conclusion
Conclusion
Our feelings about the ASUS ROG Crosshair X870E Glacial are very much split into two camps. To start with let’s cover the good.
Good
On the desk, or in the box, there is no denying its beauty. The cover that has adorned the top of every page of this review is about as good as they come. Truly gorgeous. Slightly holographic in the light, and the 3D logo is stunning. Additionally the white aesthetic is something that we love, and the Glacial lives up to its name. Whatever problems might come from their design, the use of magnets to hold the covers in place is something we appreciate. If you love a
Connectivity is excellent. With twin Type-C and Type-A front panel USBs, as well as three USB 2.0 front panel headers, you’ve loads of internal options. Around the back you can enjoy even more, especially in the Type-C department. Dual LANs and WiFi 7 help your networking happen without delay. 7 (seven) M.2 slots – three onboard, two via DIMM.2, two via the supplied Hyper M.2 card – help keep even the most storage rich user sated. The Glacial is so replete with high bandwidth hardware that if ASUS had called it the Extreme we wouldn’t object.
Performance is where the Crosshair Glacial really shines. It overclocks so smoothly and easily that we ran into thermal limitations, and the limitations of our Ryzen 9 9900X, long before the motherboard even broke a sweat. 24+2+2 110A power stage lets you tinker to your hearts desire, and if you can find sufficiently good cooling you’ll have all the toys you could wish for. The fact that even under the harshest loading we could implement the VRMs peaked at just 61°C shows how well built the Glacial is.
Less Good
We hammered the point throughout our board photographs. However, we know some people skip here so it bears repeating. The Glacial has three main covers making it look as good as it does. The bottom two need to be removed to use it. The top one to get the 12V ATX power inputs and CPU fan headers connected can thankfully be refitted. The middle one to fit a GPU so basically everyone as there is no VGA connection on the rear I/O but you’d not be using integrated graphics on a board of this calibre. The bottom one to connect lighting or some case fans or USB 2.0 controlled AIOs (AKA all of them). This bottom one is the strangest of all of them though.
We’re shocked nobody noticed. This isn’t a cheap motherboard, nor is it from some neophyte company. It’s an ASUS ROG flagship, ultra-premium, sell a kidney product. Why put all that money into designs that have to live in a box? Totally crazy choice.
Final Thoughts
Lets be frank, I’m quite openly Mr White hardware. I’ve been modding cases and hardware white years before it was cool enough to be sold to the masses. This board at first glance is a dream board to me. In reality it makes me more itchy than a jumpsuit made of fire ants. They really messed up the small details on this board and in the grand scheme of spending a grand a motherboard, those things really matter. JJ spent a lot of time talking me through all the technical details of the board at CES and I really respect his never ending passion for the brand. It’s rare in the company in the grand scheme of things and they need to clone that man and send them out around the globe.
The ASUS ROG Crosshair X870E Glacial is fortunate that it has so much to offer in performance and connectivity terms, electrically its a master class of what could and should be done. The spec sheet is leagues above anything that the rivals currently have available. Be in no doubt, it has gobs of performance. Huge great lumps of it. If you can ignore the design snafus and swallow the price tag, it’s everything you expect a flagship ROG motherboard to be except aesthetically, and then its a clusterfrick of poorly thought out compromise.
Its utterly brilliant and annoyingly stupid in equal measure, and you need to decide if you can live with that. We don’t think you should have to though.
Bring on the white Arctic Godlike.
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