ASUS ROG X370 Crosshair VI Extreme Review
Up Close
Much like the chipset has, the Crosshair VI Extreme really eliminates the aesthetic gap between the ASUS ROG Intel motherboards and their AMD counterparts. You’d be extreme hard pressed to spot the differences between the C6E and an equivalent Maximus. About the only two things that are obvious are the horizontally mounted ATX 24 pin power input and the CPU cooler mounting system. Although we’ll look closer at it a little further down the page, you can clearly see what we’ve mentioned on preceding pages regarding the heatsink and IO shield blending into a homogeneous mass.
We spoke about the radiator fan grouping earlier and you can see how carefully the designers have arranged them on the Crosshair VI Extreme. Plenty of room to connect them all, without requiring you to perform some cable routing voodoo to keep things tidy. Overclockers will be pleased at the inclusion of LN2 modes as well as a slow mode DIP Switch and the always faithful retry and safe boot buttons that have recovered many a knife-edge overclock. The bottom edge of the Crosshair has the next grouping of radiator fans, perfect for having one on the front of your case to match the other in the roof. The eagle-eyed amongst you will notice that there are headers for flow monitoring neatly place next to the pump header. It is this attention to detail that is great to see, even if you almost expect it from a flagship ROG product.
Ensuring that your MOSFETs remain as cool as possible the heatsinks on the Crosshair VI Extreme are thick chunks of aluminium tied together with a very beefy heatpipe. Combining these with the huge surface area afforded to us by the integrated IO and you should be able to push your CPU to new highs.
Lastly connectivity and, as you would expect from an Extreme branded model in the ASUS ROG range, the options are plentiful. Front panel USB 3.0 and 3.1 sit alongside the umpteen USB ports around the back. The SupremeFX audio jacks are lit with LEDs to assist getting the right cables in the right holes, whilst the WiFi and GigaLAN ports connect you to the wider world.
