Review: ROG Crosshair X670E Extreme

By
CornerJack
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0

The PCB and connectors:

The clocker tools:

Why this ROG Crosshair X670E Extreme is certainly going to be an excellent card for overclocking? First of all, because it has many tools inserted directly on its PCB that will make your life much easier.

  • The power button: allows the powering of the motherboard.
  • FlexKey button : by default it allows to reboot the motherboard in case of failure, but you can give it another function via the BIOS.
  • Safe Boot: allows to restart the board even if the parameters chosen in the bios do not allow the boot. This avoids having to do a CMOS Clear and thus losing your settings.
  • ReTry Button : during cold tests, sometimes the OS freezes and a reset doesn’t allow to restart the motherboard : only solution 6, 7 seconds by keeping the START button pressed. With the ReTry button, it restarts immediately.
  • CLR CMOS : allows to erase the BIOS parameters during a boot failure.
  • The Q-Code LED: allows to identify the component responsible for the error during the boot, but also to display the temperature of the CPU and the voltages.
  • Status LED : which according to their color allows you to identify a problem or to know at what level the voltage of the component is.
  • ProbeIT: via the cables included in the bundle, you can easily read the different voltages with a multimeter
  • Slow mode : allows you to boot with a 16x coefficient and once in the OS to put back the one chosen in the bios. In cold mode, if you want to reach 6GHz in 60x100MHz, by activating the Slow Mode, you boot in 16×100 and in the OS, hop back to 60×100. It’s mostly for max screens.
  • RSVD: when activated in cold conditions (-120°C), it avoids cold boot bugs.
  • LN2 Mode jumper : allows to activate LN2 profiles in the bios.
  • Alteration Mode : allows to switch the PCIe signal from the CPU between Gen4 or Gen3 for the PCIe slot.
  • V_Latch: in relation with the “ROG True Voltician” oscilloscope present in the bundle. Once activated, it will record the minimum and maximum voltage of the vcore.
  • BCLK+ and BCLK-: to increase the frequency of the BCLK in steps of either 0.1 MHz or 1 MHz.

If you have the opportunity to acquire a multimeter, it is an essential tool to accurately measure the voltage of your processor. Personally, I can’t do without it anymore and it also allows me to see the impact of the ” LoadLine calibration ” which I will talk about during our overclocking tests. With this ROG Crosshair X670E Extreme, it’s easy to take readings thanks to the voltage measurement points on the PCB.

The PCB of this ROG Crosshair X670 Extreme:

Our ROG Crosshair X670 Extreme is based on a 20 + 2 + 2 phase power supply. The part in charge of the CPU consists of 16 phases and on this model, no doubler, but beware the phases are placed in parallel: they are really 8. The controller is here a Digi+ ASP2205 chip.

The 20 mosfets are all 110A Vishay SIC850. The mosfets in the power stages generate the most heat because they are responsible for the voltage conversion and delivery to the CPU from the 12 volt EPS connector.

Ultra complete connectivity:

As far as the connectors of our Crosshair X670E Extreme are concerned, it is of course very complete. First of all, the Clear CMOS and the button to flash the bios from a USB key.

Then we find two USB4 Type-C ports, nine USB 3.2 Gen2 (8 Type-A and 1 Type-C), a USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 (Type-C), the tips for the Wi-Fi antennas, an Ethernet 2.5Gb port and a 10Gb, an optical S/PDIF Out and the various audio outputs. Now that we have taken a look at the AORUS X670E Master and its PCB, let’s go to the BIOS to see what settings are available and what’s new.