Massive Overkill: ASUS Crosshair VII Hero X470 Motherboard Review 

Anyone actually tried to see if you can put a X370 Ryzen CPU into the X470 motherboard and what would happen?

What I am wondering since a while. Good Anti-Static Mats are safe for soldering. Can the Modmat take some spilled solder? :)

Buildzoid how do you know so much, you have a degree in EE or you learned it on your own or you have made motherboards/circuit boards? I friggin love these videos btw.

I seen oil leakage from SupremeFX and just to the bottom left of the cpu just above the pins and the oil looks like it trickled down from there. Does the board still work or you just using this board for explaining?

Gamers Nexus yeah but my msi 1080ti Seahawk X whatever can't overclock for shit. FML. What a waste.

The hardest part of my job. ^SB

Same here, even tho i have a gtx 1070+ryzen 1600 paired with msi x370 carbon and i don't even need something new anytime soon but i just like this guy for his hardwork so i just watch his video to kill time.

I watch all of buildzoids PCB breakdowns and don't understand most of it. But I can tell by his affect when he describes it if it's good or not lol

Also have a 1070 ftw and r7 1700 and crosshair vi hero and no intentions on upgrading lol

I know right. With my fx 6300 and my case sounds like a jet. but I got far cry 5

AREZ Nexus

100/10!

It's just an ad. Who cares.

Fight. Me.

Unsubbed. BLOCKED.

To me it's always been jif since the mid 90s. Seriously though, I think it's because most file extensions that are also acronyms usually don't have vowels and can't be pronounced without spelling it out. So the J sound comes from saying the letter g itself and then it's less syllables to just say if than I + F individually.

The asshole that created gif officially said it was pronounced jifs. But he's a troll and I'll continue to say gif until the day I die.

Graphic Interchange Format. GRAPHICAL, with a hard G dammit.

Mark Lowe if you don’t have a window in your case you don’t need to look your hamming motherboard

The asus boards have this feature as well.

But is it possible to do without a cpu?

@@SeacryBlastsAloT how the hell can you expect it to get into BIOS to upgrade itself without a CPU? If you have a USB, yes

@@vietanhta198 you can do it with the x470 crosshair

Would you get this over the x570 taichi? Does it have better vrms than it?

@@Sol-su2mi Id get the crosshair viii x570 not the vii x470 but yeah vrm's are great

@@twizz420 the x470 is 120 cheaper and i dont need pcie 4

@@Sol-su2mi Then yeah go for the crosshair 7... Its good for a 3900x at least, im sure it can even handle a 3950x.

@@twizz420 thanks. i hopefully will :)

No immediate plans for that one. Perhaps Buildzoid will look at it on his channel.

So even no ASRock Fatal1ty x470 professional gaming review?

It would be great though. Earlier, Buildzoid was disappointed with the X370 Taichi, so I'm curious to see if there's any improvements.

I'd hoped the Taichi Ultimate would get a look since it's got more phases than anything I've ever seen. 16 power phases. What on earth needs 16 power phases.

Dunno if it makes any difference, but figured I'd toss my vote in for a review of that as well, its currently the leading contender for me!

CheapSushi Overkill is Underrated

Nah, they're both equally bad. Overkill means you definitely waste money on features you would never use or need, underkill means you potentially waste money on something that doesn't suit your needs or requirements. As for "underkill", you'll have to look really hard to find a modern board from a reputable manufacturer that will actually cause issues because they cheaped out on components, even years down the line. Best example, I can't think of any X/B or Z/H board that will give you any kind of power delivery issues even when overclocking (where applicable), even with illogical CPU choices like an 8700K on the cheapest B360 board you probably won't have any issues. Where these issues come into play is with OEM's cutting costs with proprietary motherboards, but that issue is actually more on the CPU manufacturer's side because they put a bullshit TDP on their chips that doesn't actually allow for maximum performance at stock settings. This gives the cheapo OEM the opportunity to say "but the manufacturer says that chip is 65W TDP". Here's what you should look for: -Quality components that do the job you want them to do properly !without! being overkill -a feature set that you want or need -drivers and compatability/support (like memory) Does that mean you shouldn't buy a board that has a good power delivery system with quality components? Absolutely not! Does it mean you should buy the cheapest motherboard possible and throw on a custom loop and OC it to the brink of heat death? No. It just means that you should look for a board that suits your needs. Don't buy a board with VRM's capable of LN2 overclocking if you do regular OC'ing on water or air, that'll just result in you spending way more than necessary or useful and can even lead to more power draw due to you landing significantly outside of the peak efficiency of the components, even when overclocking. The fact that people consider overkill as something good when it comes to components that have absolutely no impact on performance or life-span and that people are willing to actually pay for that is beyond my comprehension. TL;DR It's downright impossible to find a modern motherboard from a reputable manufacturer that is built with components that are downright bad quality (as in MTBF) and "overkill" is just marketing bullshit that allows the manufacturer to charge you more for components/features you don't need.

Markus Fuchs Nah, underkill is worse. Specifically, but not limited to, the crap Intel stock coolers.

How does that refute anything of what I said? I was talking about motherboards and how hard it is to actually find something that's "underkill". It's commonly known how absolutely shit intel stock coolers are... yet they will strictly speaking allow you to use the product to its advertised performance, given decent airflow in the case. Intel packs them in with only the non-K CPU's. Sure it'll be noisy, ugly and hot and you'll be better off with a decent after market cooler but how does that refute anything of what I said about buying something that suits your needs and is reasonable? Overkill and underkill are equally bad, yet they both have different advantages and disadvantages... all of which you'll pay dearly for.

Markus Fuchs If you say so, bud.

Hey! What maximum ram speed did you do and do you think it would do stable 4x8GB b-die 4133 cl16 17 17 or at least 4000 cl16-16-16- with a 5000G APU as we know they have top dd4 mem controller easily doing 4200-4400 in 1:1 with their also way better Infinity fabric.

@@chovekb I have no idea honestly how well that board will do with an monolithic APU. My particular board was able to run 4000 MT though. My 5800X seems to hold it back, I was sadly unable to get the infinity fabric stable at 2000 MHz. This was though only possible with an2x8 single rank configuration. Best configuration I was able to achieve with 4x8 was cl14 3600 (14 13 13 24 37).

@@Koeras16 Yes, that's the cpu imc bottleneck there! Thank you for your answer! :) 3600 cl 14 13 13 is pretty good still!

@@chovekb Yeah sadly one of the 4 dimms died a few weeks ago. My 7800 XT probably cooked it to death. And btw, 3800 MT/s didn't boot at all whatever I tried with 4x8. It does run with a dual rank 2x16 kit though.

@@Koeras16 Probably yes. You should put a fan blowing at the ram somehow! I have a fan from a Wraith Stealth cooler exactly for that reason! It's very cheap to find these days and is pretty silent as well! Alright thanks for your answers again and good luck! :)

ASRock usually use good components but their bios is abysmal...

Deal.

Gibberish??

Giraffecs

I'll call them Jay-pegs when everyone else starts calling them potos *OH, DID YOU FORGET THAT THE P IN JPEG STANDS FOR PHOTO WHICH IS AN F SOUND? DID YOU FORGET THAT THE PRONUNCIATION OF AN ACRONYM IS NOT RELATED TO THE PHONETIC SOUND THE CHARACTERS MAKE IN THEIR RESPECTIVE NON-SHORTENED WORDS? I THINK YOU DID*

You're a JFEG.

I bought this last year knowing the 3000 series would need a high end board. glad i did cuz i just saved like $700 on buying a x570 board lol

I'm gonna do the same

Yep

Yup same here with 3900x

EASYYY, this board can handle fcking 600A bro. @1.4V your CPU needs to use 840W, that's just impossible, so there is no way to overload this VRM (maybe overheat, but you can watercool it). A 3900X OC will probably run towards like 250W.

This. That's one of the best features of the CH6. It allowed me to use a 280mm AIO I had from before, and at the time there weren't a ton of coolers with AM4 support out of the box.

Probably due to the fact that most coolers that aren't outdated have already gotten updated mounting brackets. I suspect that ASUS did what they did with 1st Gen so more people could get on the AM4 platform without downtime.

What I am abut to say is only relevant to the 0.001% of people who will use this board, but a lot of old LN2 pots that are AMD compatible are made BEFORE AM4 release so they have AM3 hole pattern. At the same time, guys who produce extreme cooling solutions are probably will or already made new retention brackets with hole pattern to support new platform.

if you do overkill overclocking then you could just buy a cheap South bridge heatsink from alphacool or amazon.

sorry I mean Waterblock not heatsink

Just dropped a 3950X overclocked to 4.3Ghz all core at 1.3v and heatsink is still touchable during loads, this VRM setup is freaking O VER KILL for ryzen, like damn i’m pushing a 10000 cb point R20 cpu here ! Can you look like you struggle ??? Lol

yeah, good point. That would interest a lot of people in my opinion.

My 3700x + Crosshair VI Hero + tweaked 3733 14-14-12-21 tuned memory comes very close to the stock 9900k, but still trails the 9900k @ 5.2ghz with ddr4 4000+ memory by a decent margin. Still, very impressed how competitive the 3700x is with really fast memory.

I'm pissed off at that while the CH7 is a great board on its own, the SupremeFX bullshit and broken as fuck BIOS updates ruin the board for me. Shoulda stuck with my Haslell system and waited until DDR5.

@@Wasmachineman can you explain this?

SupremeFX is dogshit compared to vanilla Realtek, and broken as fuck BIOS updates as in RAM overclocking is rather broken on the latest AGESA 0.0.7.2 BIOS. At least for me it is, I can't get my 2x16GB 3000 CL14 set to run at 3200 CL14 without erroring like crazy.

Update: AGESA 1.0.0.3 seems to have partially unfucked my RAM overclocking, i'm running the above set at 3200 CL14 with tightened subtimings as we speak. Needs 1.45V though.

@@Wasmachineman Have you tried running the memory at 2T command rate? My kit wouldn't run stable until I did that, I'm also pretty sure it defaulted to 1T from D.O.C.P

Well you will be able to put that CPU at least in that motherboard without having concerns of cooking your VRM. Should be fine too for LN2.

Iraklis Tselegidis I wrote a wall of text about this about an hour ago. I agree that these videos are pretty pointless when it comes to reviewing them for the vast majority of users.

Markus Fuchs how are these reviews pointless? How would we know that they're overkill to begin with, if they won't examined. Besides, there are plenty of videos that do cater to your average consumer. Clearly a detailed breakdown and analysis of VRM is NOT tailored to your average consumer. If you don't care about this shit, then don't watch it?

spiznas Read the post I made some time earlier, it explains my stance on these reviews in detail.

Well, i'm not one of those "Inside the Industry". But, with pure logic i would consider saying that the Boards and the parts among them are brute in comparison with the basic component -processor - being weak. Examine it and posting it online is cool, that gives some "light" to the consumer whats happening and what is that you are getting for the money besides the RGB lights and the "gaming" Stickers. If one processor manufacturer could stay to one socket architecture for long time (>5 years) then we might could get the most of those Boards by just changing the processors as they develop the Frequency speeds

this board isn't even close to $399, but ½ that...

@@Tallnerdyguy its like 299 on amazon. I got one for 150 though

multiTYRT covert peanut butter product placement.

Pffff. What’s really awesome is how you can mistype “GTX” using Russian keyboard. A lot of people simply forget to switch their layout and type “ПЕЧ”, which literally translates to something like “OVN” or “HEATR” xD And no kidding, there is real oven with Nvidia inside blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2015/06/09/gpu-powered-june-oven/

Pando the card can create JIFs, but can it create GIFs?

I hope not yours

I'm the only guy at the retirement center with a water cooled Threadripper and the only guy that gets around on a bicycle. I call eating out, making a sandwich and eating it while sitting in a lawn chair.

@@maxhughes5687 its better to use a bike to get around anyways. Too many people these days arent getting enough exercise

Getting my C7H today, but can say the same of the 'jaming' (according to steve) 7!

Same!!

...there's no graphics out in the mobo.

Wondering the same!

At least I'm not the only one that came back to this video for the vrm info 😂😂😂

same

yes I just bought one. I can wait a couple years to upgrade to PCIEx4 gen. this board sounds like it will handle anything AM4. Would this VRM be good enough for 2990wx?

Same 😀

i wanna buy it and im questioning myself if its overkill for a ryzen 5 2600

I got that board to power that chip. I would like to know their thoughts on it too.

More than enough.

乇乂ㄒ尺卂 ㄒ卄丨匚匚 I thought it's the same as last year's Prime X370 Pro eh?

Prolly the best x470 for zen2 to buy if 240$+ is not a problem, has BIOS flashback and can oc even the 3950x with no problems

I currently run this board, I do have the option of selling it along with my 2700x to a friend and getting the c8h board along with the 3900x but after watching this video I've no doubt it can run even the 16c no issue. As for pcie4, I have no use for it but I'm torn between sticking with the c7h and throwing a 3900x in it or going X570, what a dilemma lol

I have this board coming in mail, and going to pair it with 3900X. Should be no problemo, but USB BIOS Flashback is required if you do not have an older AM4 for BIOS update

this is not DC current so Ohms law do not apply so well. These are highly transient (very short) pulses of current. If this current is sustained theoretically for one whole second, it would melt the board easily. 200 amp is the current feeding my entire house. The fuses are bigger than my thumb. So when he talk about this amount of current, it is the instantaneous value for a few nanoseconds.

when i update nvidia drivers i uncheck hdmi audio, geforce experience all the time LOL

yeah just download the driver from nvidia and pick custom install. then uncheck geforce ex and the 3dvision drivers and all the other junk you dont need.

i want ancel tho

thats up to you..... red squirrel keep in mind that your drivers wont automatically update now (did they in geforce exp? i never used it so i dont know) and i heard that gef exp auto adjusts game settings like shadows and stuff so you might have to do that by hand now. most of that stuff isnt really necessary to me but others may feel different

No drivers will not update automatically without Geforce Experience, you will have to go directly to Nvidia website check for drivers and download directly which is something I'm perfectly willing to do as long as I don't have to keep Nvidia experience installed.

catonpillow extremely unlikely as that would need to be a complete redesign of the CPU core layout each ccx group would have to be 5 cores each not 4 to get odd 10 core,, more then likely be 6 cores per ccx or just make it a native 8 core with no ccx as that would remove a massive amount if latency between the ccx group due to L3 cache having to kept in sync when its doing work on the other ccx group (in the same group latency is very low)

I didn't mean this node lee. :)

Damn good point and one that seems almost taboo to talk about. Can you find any articles that even bring this up? I've been searching all day for info on how to get more memory reliably onto any X470 board and the best across all the boards is 4 slots if its slow 2400mhz and 16GB sticks are like some kind of evil that must never be tested. Having said that. Anecdotally I can find loads of people talking about how they got this or that stick kit working just fine overclocked to amazing levels but I can't base a really expensive purchase on a forum post from people that may or may not just want you to think they have more Its frustrating and no one is covering it like its something no one would be interested in. But I think there is a huge audience of people doing more with their PC's now more than ever with a whole generation of video editors using all kinds of new software that eats memory for breakfast. Ho hum.

Yeah it's sketching me out, especially since I do want to get 32GB / 4 sticks, and it will cost something like $550 Canadian just for the Ram I definitely want to know it's going to work before I donate so much to the memory producers ;)

XFourty7 never 4 sticks just 2 in the correct 2 slots as it will limit the max speed the ram can run at with 4

@lee x No, it definitely shouldn't 100% prevent you from running it on this board if a prior generation board can do it lol? Link to the supported memory table (X370-F Gaming board) in my initial comment.

I've read what you just wrote before Leex but I saw screenshots today of people running X370, all four slots filled running 3200mhz and higher. Nothing on X470 frustratingly as I would have immediately bought whatever they were using. Also on manufacturers own QVL lists they do have some higher speeds with all four slots as long as you're using 4gb sticks. But no higher speeds with 2 slots if its 16gb x 2. The limits seem so artificial to me. I'm writing this on an old intel 2600k PC on a cheap gigabyte mobo with 4x4GB DDR3 as fast as was available at the time and i had no clue there were limits back then. It just worked. XMP profile for all dimms right there one click away. Kinda maddening to see that's the same amount of memory I'm expected to buy again six years later. My phone has 64gb, its insulting is what it is lol