ASUS unveiled the flagship ROG Crosshair VIII Extreme board with passive cooling of AMD X570 chipset

ASUS unveiled new flagship motherboard ROG Crosshair VIII Extreme for AMD Ryzen processors based on AMD X570 passively cooled chipset. New motherboard is intended to build high-performance gaming PC and it fully meets its name & ; it is made in E-ATX form factor and is equipped with a seriously reinforced 20-phase power system, built on the scheme 18+2.

The ROG Crosshair VIII uses 90A power phases and Japanese 10K metal capacitors for quality power. The novelty uses a passive chipset cooling system similar to the previously introduced ROG Crosshair VIII Dark Hero. There are four DDR4 sockets with support for up to 128 GB of RAM.

 True, the manufacturer did not specify the maximum frequency of supported RAM. But taking into account the board's rank, we can expect it to support DDR4-5100 standard for Ryzen 5000 series processors. The ROG Crosshair VIII Extreme has six standard SATA III slots and offers up to five M.2 PCIe 4.0 x4 slots. However, to use the full potential of the PCIe 4.0 standard, you must have Ryzen 5000 or Ryzen 3000 series processors. Otherwise, the M.2 connectors will operate in PCIe 3.0 x4 mode. Three of them are mated directly to the CPU itself, the other two, which can be implemented by ASUS ROG DIMM.2 expansion card, are responsible for the AMD chipset.

 Also the novelty offers two PCIe 4.0 x16 and one PCIe 3.0 x1 slots. As for networking capabilities, ROG Crosshair VIII Extreme offers support for 10 Gigabit wired connection via Marvell AQtion AQC113CS controller and 2.5 Gigabit LAN via Intel I225-V controller. Moreover, the board supports 2x2 Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2 wireless standards. The manufacturer has not yet indicated all the technical characteristics of the ROG Crosshair VIII Extreme model, so some features of the novelty have to be noted by eye. For example, it can count eight USB Type-A connectors, two Intel Thunderbolt 4 with DisplayPort 1.4 function, as well as two conventional DisplayPort. The sound is made by Realtek ALC4082 controller and ASUS SupremeFX technology. Because the board belongs to the premium segment, the sound codec is amplified by ESS Sabre 9018Q2C DAC/AMP. Other features include a 2-dimensional OLED screen, clip-in NVMe storage mounting mechanism and a bracket for the included graphics card. The manufacturer has not yet announced the price of the ROG Crosshair VIII.

Biostar boards on the AMD B550 and X570 have received Smart Access Memory support. Models on the AMD B450 and X470 are as follows

Biostar reported that its AMD 500 series motherboards have received support for Smart Access Memory (SAM) technology. The technology allows the Ryzen series CPU to access the full amount of video memory in discrete Radeon graphics gas pedals at once. Thanks to this in some games it is possible to get an additional increase in performance.

To get support for Smart Access Memory (SAM) technology, the manufacturer offers to download and install a new version of the BIOS for their motherboards:

Biostar Racing X570GT8; Biostar Racing X570GTA; Biostar Racing X570GT; Biostar Racing B550GTA; Biostar Racing B550GTQ; Biostar B550MH; Biostar A520MH; Biostar B550M-SILVER.

In addition, Biostar explained how to activate SAM in motherboard firmware. To do this, it is necessary:

Log in to BIOS; Go to the laquo tab; Advanced settings» (Advanced); Select the laquo option; PCI Subsystem Settings»; Enable «Above 4G Decoding» and «Re-size BAR Support» Press F10 on the keyboard to save settings and reboot.

The company also promised to release new versions of BIOS with Smart Access Memory (SAM) support for AMD 400-series chipset-based motherboards this month. The latest models from the manufacturer include: Racing X470GT8, Racing X470GTA, Racing X470GTQ, Racing X470GTN, X470MH, X470NH, Racing B450GT3, Racing B450GT, B450MX, B450MHC, B450MH and B450NH.