Conclusion

Final Words 

It is without any doubt that the Hero is one of the more popular series motherboards for the X470 platform. Features and perf wise, it's all a bit of the same though, so brand preference will be a thing with your purchasing preferences. The C7H Hero offers all the connectivity and features you need. ASUS offers proper audio, AC WIFI and Gigabit Ethernet (Intel) jack. Other than that you get it all from proper M.2 performance, dual multi-GPU slots, six SATA3 slots, all the USB connectivity you need and overall a lovely looking product. AMD made a very nice step forward with what pretty much is a bit of a die-shrink and tweaking. When you look at absolute numbers the 2700X is a good 10% faster than a 1800X, however, what you really need to be comparing to is the 1700X, and that's a 20% difference in performance. Now everything, however, has to do with the increased clock-frequency, over time the platform that houses Ryzen has evolved and matured as well, it all adds up from lower latency, better memory support, faster base clock, higher turbo bins, the accumulation of it all is what has become Ryzen 2000. It is a truly fast threading processor! Game performance at the lowest resolution, hey Intel still wins there but the margin and gap have become smaller. I stated in the original Ryzen review already that 1080p gaming really isn't an issue, except, maybe in that grey matter in between your ears. Everything is trivial towards pricing, and what I did not see coming is the price level of the 2700X. The asking price of 329 USD for this processor is just staggering and oozes value. With Ryzen 2000 / Zen+ the 3.8~4.0 GHz domain also has been breached. Zen+ can easily do 4.2 GHz, the top-notch SKUs 4.3 and with a bit of luck on all cores, you can achieve 4.3 or 4.4 GHz with a bit of liquid cooling. Ergo, I am impressed as to what Ryzen 7 2700X is offering.

The motherboard

ASUS has one of the more appealing offerings with this X370 series motherboard. It functions well and offers a wide feature set. Please make sure that you flash the latest firmware to this new platform. That said, at €299 the Crosshair VII Hero is certainly not cheap. We quite honestly did not run into stuff that worried us though. The motherboard used seems pretty well tuned, we had no stability issues. At this price, I would have liked faster ethernet though, something 5 or 10Gbit. The Hero is fitted with one Gigabit Ethernet jack and if you opt the WIFI edition, AC Wifi. You get an 8-pin and 6-pin power header for a bit of tweaking. Overall it feels solid, a well-designed board. Memory worked straight out of the box, we tried both the 3200 and 3400 MHz kits we have from G.Skill. Tweaking wise, the motherboards will not be any limitation, not from any brand as the Zen+ processor all will reach that 4.2~4.4 Ghz domain. 

Gaming performance

Previous Ryzen reviews have taught me that it is extremely hard to convince a big part of the guru3d community and reader base that Ryzen is plenty fast for gaming. The new Zen+ processors and the respective platform overall bring a bit more oomph compared to last years Ryzen. The fact remains, that if you take a Core i7 8700K it will still beat Ryzen in CPU bound gaming situations (low resolutions or extremely high refresh rate where a game is not GPU bound). The difference and gap towards Intel are getting smaller though. Get yourself a nice G.Skill FlareX memory kit at 3200 MHz and you've covered your gaming bases. Keep in mind that a CPU bottleneck always has been far less important compared to a GPU bottleneck, which why I'll keep saying it, that differential is trivial at best. Honestly, with the money you save on this processor compared directly to the cheapest eight-core Intel processor you can find, you probably should invest in a faster graphics cards. 

DDR4 Memory

The latest firmware for both the older 300 chipsets series and the new 400 Chipset series including the X470 have matured and is an accumulation of DDR4 memory support that evolved when the original Ryzen series was released. Memory compatibility should not and likely will not be an issue as long as you stick to recently released DIMMs. I'll keep repeating this, but there are some really good Ryzen optimized kits out there. The G.Skill Flare X series at 3200 MHz CL14 is hitting a nice sweet-spot and is 100% stable + optimized for your Ryzen infrastructure. We also tested the new Ryzen Sniper X optimized kit from G.Skill, it runs 3400 MHz straight out of the box and will bring your memory bandwidth in the 50K rangers. However, take my advice:  Flare X at 3200 MHz CL14. Install it, activate the profile in the BIOS, restart ...  and never look back. 

Energy efficiency

With The 2700X processor now fabbed at 12nm TDP now has risen towards 105 Watts, that is a bit steep. Realistically, does anyone really care? I doubt it. A full PC at idle will sit in the 50 Watt range with a dedicated graphics card installed (GeForce GTX 1080 / 16 GB memory / SSD and the motherboard). When we stressed the processors with a Prime 1024M run we reached roughly 166 Watts. A threaded CB15 run, however, reveals close to 200 Watts of power consumption (for the entire PC). That certainly is on the high side. When we game we hover at 270~280 Watts, but obviously that factor is dependant on the type of game and graphics card you use of course. So yeah, it's all a notch higher with the 2700X for sure, it's up to you whether or not this is a relevant thing for your purchasing choices. Remember, this is a fully locked & loaded eight-core and 16-threads processor. 

The conclusion

The new X470 motherboards make a compelling proposition and bring in refined turbos for Ryzen 2000, a higher XFR and higher memory frequency support. Add all other features and the design to that and I will still say, the Hero does seem a bit pricey? Hey, if you look around a bit, you'll spot  X470 motherboards starting in the 150 USD range, this one is 300, I can't make that sound any nicer than it really is as performance wise, it's all roughly the same. It's a nice motherboard though, nice features, fast and also we feel like the ASUS BIOS, and if you're gonna tweak the proc, that certainly helps. ASUS offers a nice looking board that is Aura LED configurable and then offers all the usuals like the two x16 (x8 Gen 3) slots for SLI and Crossfire, a very nice audio solution and of course dual M.2 slots. Features like USB 3.1 are plentiful as well. AC WIFI is optional, this board is 20 bucks cheaper without it. I mentioned this already, but at 300 bucks though, we would have like to see a 5/10 GBit compatible Ethernet jack to make yourself a little more future proof. The motherboard otherwise feels stable thanks to a really quality build with proper components used. I do love the dedicated PUMP FAN header (most people these days have some sort of liquid cooling going on). This review has covered most of the hardware on the motherboard, I do like to mention that ASUS has an excellent software suite allowing you to control all these fan headers in software as well. Whether or not Ryzen 5 or 7 is for you remains something only you can decide. On the memory side of things, just go for G.Skill FlareX and you are set. This conclusion then, we would definitely recommend the ASUS ROG Crosshair VII Hero, the price for this Hero is a bit steep, though once bought, you'll sincerely like it and quickly forget about that.

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