The AM4 socket is not quite dead since Asus has just announced a new big motherboard. Although a little late, the brand announces, indeed, its Crosshair VIII Extreme, a very, very high-end card.
Crosshair VIII Extreme: the very high-end motherboard that arrives a little late!
To put a little in context, the X570 chipset was released in 2019 at the time of the announcement of Ryzen 3000. However, it is only two years later, when we start talking seriously about theAM5 that Asus decides to release its Extreme card in X570…
Anyway, the card is here and as usual, we find a really impressive reference. Here, we are talking about a model with an E-ATX format. This model is also packed with radiators and heatsinks of all kinds. At the same time, it is necessary to specify that around the socket there are 18+2 power supply phases. And the latter include 90A MOSFETs, microfine Alloy coils and Japanese 10k metallic black capacitors.
Otherwise, the data sheet does not mention anything about the RAM. However, we can distinguish the presence of four DDR4 slots that can store up to 128 GB. Only the supported frequencies are unknown to us.
For storage, there is enough, with five M.2 slots and six SATA III. Of course, depending on the processor and the number of PCIe 4.0 lines available, some M.2 will run in PCIe 4.0 or not.
Finally, for the rest of the connectivity, we find a duo of PCIe x16 ports running at the 4.0 x16 standard with the right CPU (Ryzen 3000 at least). With two graphics cards plugged in, these will work in x8/x8. Finally, at the bottom, we have a tiny PCIe x1 3.0.
At the back, we will find dual Ethernet connectivity managed by Intel i225-V and Marvell AQtion AQC113CS. The same goes for audio with the presence of the ROG SupremeFX with an ALC4082 chip coupled with an ESS ES9018Q2C DAC. We will finish by mentioning WiFi and the presence of two Thunderbolt 4 ports in USB Type C.
Of course, we have all the ROG features like dual bios or Extreme OC kit with LN² modes, Safe Boot, etc. Similarly, all connectors on the board will be safeslot for example. In short, a very high-end motherboard whose price has not yet been revealed.
