ASUS ROG X470 Crosshair VII Hero Review

Up Close

Here it is in all its glory. It’s a strange state of affairs where the rest of the motherboard has moved into the territory of all modern PCB designs but the socket, once almost futuristic, is beginning to show its age. Obviously the fact AMD have stuck with approximately the same design for as long as we care to remember is one of the main reasons they make for such a good platform. Instead of buying a new motherboard each time a new CPU comes out you can just stick it in your existing platform, or stick your old CPU into a new platform, but the end result is that the plastic fan clips are now looking somewhat dated whilst the rest of the Crosshair VII Hero is bang up-to-date.

  

Although we’re showing our age somewhat with this statement, we think that the best side-effect of the move towards RGB lighting on everything is the neutrality of PCBs. Once upon a time multi-coloured plastics were the norm. Then we had black PCBs but with coloured plastics to emphasise your individuality. RGB lighting has ended the need for that and so we get a lot of all black motherboards that spring to life when they’re turned on. It means that in this mode, unbuilt and on a stand, they still look the business. The harmony between the IO shield heatsink, chipset heatsink and M.2 heatsink (above the first PCI Express slot) looks gorgeous. Everything is well laid out too, with nowhere looking too cramped nor too empty.

  
  

We’ll take a closer look at this corner of the Crosshair VII Hero on the next page, but for now we feel it’s worth mentioning how good the chipset heatsink looks. The combination of an RGB ROG logo, brushed finish and the traces that echo the copper traces on the PCB itself really lend a classy aesthetic to proceedings.

  

The heatsinks are extremely stylish with a brushed finish and plenty of metal to keep the VRM temperatures as low as possible. This should combine nicely with the more efficient Ryzen revision to make the whole system a lot cooler than the X370 setup ran. The blended IO shield also has AURA RGB lighting so you can tailor the visuals to your own personal taste, a feature we’re used to seeing on all ASUS motherboards lately.

  
  

As befits a premium ROG motherboard the Crosshair VII Hero has plenty of headers. The business corner has support for an AIO as well as two fans so that you can mount a 240mm AIO in the top of your case to keep the CPU cool. There is also both an RGB header for your AURA connected RGB strips and an addressable header. Finally onboard power and reset switches make testing your build extremely simple.

We know by this point you’re all as keen as we are to see what fruits these endeavours have born, but there is more to show you first before we get down to the graphs. Onwards!